The
father, whose daughter was killed by a terrorist, helps others
Eperjesi Ildikó
This article was published in the Hungarian journal
HETEK on 10th September 2004. The English translation was provided by
the journalist who wrote it, Eperjesi Ildikó
 The
tragedy in Beslan, Russia, showed us in a condensed way the horror
thousands of families in Israel have experienced for the last years. One
of them, businessman Arnold Roth born in Australia, whose beautiful
teenage daughter was murdered in a suicide terror attack in Jerusalem,
created a foundation to give a hand to families where there are disabled
children.
What makes a happy and well-off Australian family immigrate
to Israel?
My wife, Frimet, was raised in New York by parents who
loved Israel. She developed a strong sense of Zionism as a girl. She and I
met in the mid-seventies when I was pursuing post-graduate studies in New
York. She had already decided that aliyah was definitely in her plans. So
when our dating began to get serious, she asked me if I was willing to
live in Israel. I told her that I agreed Israel was the natural place for
Jews to live, and so she asked me when I was planning to move there. I had
to think hard about this, and said I felt I needed to spend some time in
Australia making use of the law degree which I had just received.
Otherwise the five years I spent in university would have gone to waste.
Evidently she was comfortable with my answer because we got married and
set up our home in Melbourne where I had been born. But we were both very
much committed to the idea of leaving Melbourne as soon as possible.
After
twelve years of marriage and life in Australia, we felt we were ready for aliyah. Frimet and I and our four Melbourne-born children (then aged
between ten and two) set up our first Israeli home in Jerusalem's Ramot
neighbourhood in August 1988. Three daughters were born to us in Jerusalem
in the next few years.
We had no material reason to leave either Melbourne or New
York. We were comfortable there, lived in a very nice house with two cars
and a lovely garden. We are native English-speakers so culturally we were
"at-home" there - and the career opportunities in Australia are certainly
better than those in Israel. We understood all of this before we made
aliyah. But as a religiously observant family with a sense of Jewish
history, watching the Israel grow we felt a strong "pull" to be there and
connect our lives with the life of the Jewish state.
Was it difficult to start up in a new place?
There were of course difficulties in adjusting to life in
Israel. Our oldest child was ten when we arrived. This is an age when you
can still hope that a child will adapt to a new environment. He did, and
the younger children did too. All of them were perfectly fluent in Hebrew
by the end of our first year and quickly found friends, though the first
few months were rocky with a lot of tears. For me, learning to speak
Hebrew was a challenge. I was too busy earning a livelihood to be able to
find the time to study the language but eventually my Hebrew skills became
reasonable - though certainly not good - through day-to-day exposure to
Israeli society. Frimet, my wife, spoke an excellent Hebrew long before we
made aliyah, so she took on some roles (like arguing with the people at
the phone company) that I was not able to do. This made a positive
difference. There were other challenges as well. We had to get used to
living on a much smaller income and in a far smaller home, than we were
accustomed to. This was not easy, and is still not easy. It has taken us
years to grow comfortable with the Israeli way of doing things.
Culturally, many of the people among whom we live in Israel have
backgrounds very different to ours. This naturally has an effect on how
they speak, how they stand in line at the bank, how they drive. So we have
adapted. But even so, there are still plenty of moments these days when we
shake our heads in amazement at the things we see and experience. Israel
continues to be an adventure for us. But today, after living here for
sixteen years and with children who are completely part of the Israeli
system and way-of-life, who have served in the army, it feels like home.
Has your immigration to Israel made any impact on how your
family is organized?
Children are the focus of life in this country. This is
true for all Israelis, irrespective of their backgrounds. In Australia or
the United States, we would never have dreamed of letting one of our
children walk down the street to visit a friend unaccompanied. We would
drive him or her, or stand outside the house and keep a watch as the child
went down the street. There are dangerous people everywhere, and people
walking by will prefer to mind their own business and not get involved
even if they see a child standing on the street, lost and crying. Here,
everyone takes an interest in children.
This does not mean Israel is free
of dangers, of course. Every place has its sick people and dangerous
situations. But the culture of Israel is one which places a high value on
concern with family life and especially with children; this makes a real
difference. Compared with the society we left behind, I think our children
grew up with more freedom and a sense of their own individual
responsibility to their friends and family, and to the community around
them.
I’m afraid there is a threat in Israel that children are
equally exposed to. Your beautiful teenage daughter fell victim to
terrorism as well. As you recall, what was she like?
Malki was one of those people who always look for
opportunities to help other people. Nothing in life made her happier than
giving a hand to someone in need. She was happy, optimistic, creative,
musical, full of the love of life and of her friends. At school, she was
someone who would walk up to one of the other students who looked unhappy
and try - without any invitation - to turn that person's worried look into
a smiling face.
How did the disaster happen?
On 9th August 2001, she spent the morning with her best
friend, our neighbour Michal, decorating the bedroom of a girlfriend who
was supposed to come home the next day from her holiday in America. At
lunchtime, they decided to take a bus to the centre of Jerusalem to a
pizza restaurant that both girls loved to visit. A few minutes before two
o'clock in the afternoon, the place was full of teenagers, children, their
mothers, some tourists. A young man, a little older than Malki, walked in
with a guitar case on his back.
Malki loved music; she was a skilled
flautist who had been a player in the Jerusalem Youth Orchestra. If she
noticed this young man at all, she probably would have felt comfortable
with his being someone like her, a person with music in his soul. But this
man's music came straight from hell. He exploded himself a moment after
stepping up to the serving counter where the two girls were standing and
waiting for their pizza. This wealthy young man, a deeply religious Moslem
from a land-owning family, murdered fifteen completely innocent people and
maimed and injured 130 more.
Malki and her friend - who were so close in
life - were buried side-by-side on a hilltop at the entrance to Jerusalem
the following day.
What did Israel mean to Malki?
Malki was in love with Israel. She wrote a lovely song
which expressed this love and which was released commercially on a CD. She
left us a diary in which she described how much she felt the pain of
terrorism through the suffering of people whom she knew only through the
reports in the newspapers. Her diary tells us that, secretly and without
letting us know, she cried when she read about the injured and the dead.
She felt Jewish, and understood the attachment that brought Frimet and me
to the decision to live in the land of Israel.
When her grandmother
visited us from her home in Melbourne, Malki sat with her for hours,
listening to stories of life before the second world war in Poland, to my
mother's experiences in Auschwitz and Nazi work-camps. She felt connected
to the Jewish world that was wiped away by the Germans.
You set up a foundation in memory of Malki. Why did you
establish the Malki Foundation?
During the week of shiva, my wife and children and I sat
together and decided to create a living memorial to Malki that reflected
her love of disabled children. Malki's youngest sister has been blind and
profoundly disabled since she was one year old. This exposed Malki at a
very young age to challenges which many people do not see in an entire
lifetime. One could write many pages about Malki's acts of kindness and
concern. Her name is very similar to the Hebrew word for angel; now that
we have lost her, it is evident to us that she really was an angel.
What does the foundation deal with?
The Malki Foundation raises money from private donations
and spends its funds to benefit Israeli families with a disabled child in
two ways. One is that we provide them with equipment to make it possible
to keep their child at home for as long as they feel able to do so. Too
often, families give up and place their child in institutional care
because it's too difficult. So we give them wheelchairs, bath-inserts,
standers -- all kinds of expensive items that they cannot obtain on their
own. We believe strongly in the value and importance of home care. No
institution can provide a child with what parents can.
The other thing we
do is help those families obtain paramedical services in their own homes.
A disabled child often needs a lot therapy; our youngest daughter
certainly does and we know how very expensive those services are. Most
people are simply crushed by the financial burden of physiotherapy,
occupational therapy, speech therapy and other essential treatments.
The Malki Foundation says to those families: go and find the best therapist
for your child and arrange for as many hours of therapy each week as your
child needs. Then send us the receipt for payment, and we will reimburse
you. We don't give them back the whole cost because we have learned that
it makes sense for the beneficiaries to feel that they still have some
financial responsibility. But we provide enough so that the burden is
almost entirely lifted from their shoulders.
I am proud that we have brought happiness to many Israeli
families, Jewish, Christian and Moslem without discrimination, who thought
they were struggling alone with the heavy challenges of caring for their
disabled child. Our daughter's beautiful life is remembered by many
families in this way. |
