Four other Americans killed in Hebrew U. bombing

NEW YORK -- In addition to U.C. Berkeley graduate Marla Bennett, four other Americans were killed by the July 31 bomb at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Bennett was sharing a table in the popular Frank Sinatra Cafeteria with her friend and Pardes colleague Benjamin Blutstein, 25, of Susquehanna Township, Pa.

Blutstein, who like Bennett had just extended a two-year stay in Jerusalem for two more years, had been due back in the United States on Thursday to visit his family.

Those close to him described Blutstein as a young man dedicated to learning about Judaism and working as a disc jockey. In Israel, where religious and secular societies are largely separate, Blutstein's ability to merge the two worlds was rare, and left an impact, some said.

With his crocheted yarmulke, ritual fringes, earring and open shirt, "it drove the religious people crazy and it drove the secular people crazy," his father, Dr. Richard Blutstein, said.

Pardes officials described Benjamin as a kind of class clown who was also very serious about his studies. He often played bongo drums at Pardes parties, yet took living according to Jewish law very seriously.

The elder Blutstein had visited his son in May. He recalled how an Israeli rap musician asked Benjamin, who played trance and techno music at Jerusalem clubs as DJ Benny-B, to perform at a rave party in Tel Aviv demonstrating against the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"His politics weren't along those lines, but he went," his father said. "He warmed up for an Arab rap group, whom he criticized -- not for their politics, but for their music. He was not primarily political. "

Like others, Blutstein was aware of the dangers he faced in Jerusalem.

In a letter to his family last Thanksgiving, he wrote that some "might think I'm kind of crazy for being in a dangerous part of the world. Perhaps they are right. But I feel that I'm doing something very important. I am growing and changing."

Another victim was Janis Ruth Coulter, 36, assistant director of admissions for overseas students at Hebrew University's Rothberg International School.

Coulter arrived in Israel on July 30 to accompany 19 graduate students about to begin intensive Hebrew language classes.

"Janis was extremely committed to Hebrew University and what it stands for," said her friend, Lisa Magnas, a descendant of university founder Judah Magnes and president of the university's American alumni association.

Everyone from the American Friends of Hebrew University office in New York "goes to Israel once a year, and this was her turn," Magnas said. "She was really excited about going. She died for everything she believed in."

Coulter, who lived in Brooklyn, grew up Episcopalian in West Roxbury, Mass., and converted to Judaism in 1996, reportedly inspired by a lecture by Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel.

Coulter had taken Jewish studies courses at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, pursued graduate work in Jewish studies in Denver and studied at Hebrew University.

She "always felt that Jerusalem was her second love," said Peter Willner, executive vice president of AFHU.

Coulter's first love was New York, Magnas said, and she seemed to attend every Hebrew University event in the city that she could.

When Coulter arrived in Jerusalem this week, she called an AFHU official to tell him "that she felt like she was home again," Willner added.

Another U.S. citizen killed in the attack was David Gritz, 24, of Peru, Mass., a small town in the Berkshire Mountains.

Gritz was the son of a Croatian mother and American Jewish father who grew up in Paris but spent summers at the family's Berkshire home.

A dual American-French citizen, he was about to begin a Hebrew course and a graduate course in Jewish thought at the Rothberg School.

He reportedly loved classical music and playing violin and piano, but also played with friends in a punk rock band called Donkey Shot.

Gritz received his B.A. in philosophy from the Sorbonne, and had just completed his first year of studies for a master's degree in philosophy. He was one of two recipients of $12,000 scholarships from the Shalom Hartman Institute to study in Israel, reports said.

Also killed was Dina Carter, 38, who was from Greensboro, N.C., and moved to Israel in 1990.

Carter worked as a librarian and archivist at the Jewish National and University Library at Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus. She graduated with honors with an anthropology degree from Duke University and earned a master's degree in social work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Rafi Weiser, head of the library's manuscripts department, told The Jerusalem Post that Carter was a gracious, intelligent and perceptive woman with "exceptional" character.

Two Jerusalem residents also died in the attack: David Diego Ladowski, 29, an immigrant from Argentina who was a cadet in the Israeli consular corps, and Levina Shapira, 53, an employee of the university of 33 years, who was from a prominent Jerusalem family.