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Marla Bennett, 24, grew up in San Diego and was completing the second year of a three-year master's program in Judaic Studies at Hebrew University. She had been at the university to take a final exam in her sole Hebrew University class of the semester, Hebrew language. She was to have returned home on Friday for the wedding of close friends.

She received a BA in political science from the University of Berkeley at California in 2000. She was very active in Berkeley Hillel, particularly in the Conservative minyan and Hillel's women's group. She was the first recipient of the Berkeley Hillel award, Hineni . The award goes to a student who, "whenever there was something that needed to be done, their response was 'here I am,'" which perfectly exemplified Marla. She was also a leader at the Berkeley Bayit where she lived for two years.

In 1998 she attended the Rothberg School's One Year Program for her junior year abroad and decided to return after graduation in 2000. She was very much aware of the situation she was living in. "This question may seem inconsequential, but the events of the past few months in Israel have led me to believe that each small decision I make, by which route to walk to school, whether or not to go out to dinner, may have life-threatening consequences," Bennett wrote in a May 10 column in a newspaper in her hometown of San Diego. (see below)

"Marla was incredibly bright, top of her class. She was extremely outgoing, a bubbly young lady, very seriously involved in investigating her Judaism. She was interested in human beings, and finding a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict," family spokesmen Norman Greene said.

"My friends and family in San Diego ask me to come home, it is dangerous here," she wrote. "I appreciate their concern. But there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front-row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am a part of the struggle for Israel's survival. Paying for my groceries is the same as contributing money to my favorite cause."

(Sources include The Israel Line, Daily Californian, San Francisco Chronicle, SF Jewish Bulletin)

The Marla Bennet Scholarship Fund

Some friends of the Pardes Foundation have established The Marla Bennett Scholarship Fund and The Ben Blutstein Scholarship Fund with an opening donation of $5000 to each.

They have requested that each year a deserving student receive the financial help they need to attend Pardes, in memory of Marla and Ben. We at Pardes think this is a wonderful way to carry on the memory and legacy of these wonderful people we have lost.

Donations may be made to:
   American Pardes Foundation, Inc.
   136 East 39th Street
   New York, NY 10016