In memory of Janis Ruth Coulter, Yonit Rut bat Avraham v’Sarah
August 5, 1965 – July 31, 2002 (22 Av)
Yehuda Amichai, “The Diameter of the Bomb” (translated by Chana Bloch)
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
And the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
With four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
Of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
And one graveyard. But the young woman
Who was buried in the city she came from,
At a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
Enlarges the circle considerably,
And the solitary man mourning her death
At the distant shores of a country far across the sea
Includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
That reaches up to the throne of God and
Beyond, making
A circle with no end and no God.
Twenty years ago, on Wednesday July 31, 2002, a terrorist bomb exploded in the cafeteria at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. That bomb shook the campus. It also shook our world in West Roxbury.
On Thursday morning, we learned that among the six who were killed was dear, lovely, dedicated Janis Coulter.
Janis was petite, energetic and smart. Raised as an Episcopalian in West Roxbury, she came to HBT at age 30 to explore conversion to Judaism. She chose HBT because she had often come to this synagogue as a child with her grandparents. Her grandmother, Billy, had converted to Judaism to marry her grandfather. Janis chose the Hebrew name Ruth, whose story of choosing to join the Jewish people we read on Shavuot. Janis embraced Ruth’s journey as her own. It was the essence of her soul.
Janis returned home to West Roxbury in the mid-1990s after completing graduate work at the University of Denver. (She had not yet completed her thesis, which her friends lovingly found after her death, and sent to her advisor, Dr. Fred Greenspahn, who awarded her a posthumous master’s degree.)
Janis had decided to embrace Judaism, as her grandmother had, and I was fortunate to be Janis’ rabbi for seven years. She dedicated her life to Jewish causes: working for Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) in Boston before moving to Brooklyn to take her dream job with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As administrator with the Rothberg School of International Studies, Janis felt blessed to have the task of bringing students from the US to study in Israel. That Wednesday she had just arrived at the university with a new group of students in tow. As on any normal day, she was sitting in the cafeteria, catching up with old friends, when the bomb went off just a few feet away. She died in an agonizing instant.
After her death, a friend reported that Janis had responded to someone who asked whether she was afraid to go to Israel: "if something did happen I would rather die as a Jew in Israel than by some random violence in the states."
Today, the stretch of East 69th, between 5th and Madison near the New York office of Hebrew U, has been renamed Janis Coulter Place. You will see her name on a plaque in our sanctuary, where she lived her life and was mourned after her death.
Thursday night many will mark this twentieth anniversary by lighting a yahrzeit candle for Janis who left no children to say kaddish on her behalf. I admired her and was always learning from her. I miss her smile, her deep convictions, her probing questions, and her loving presence. I think of Janis often, wondering what her life, and the life of the Jewish people, might have been had she not been taken so young.
Janis, your friends and community at HBT will not forget you.
Yehi zichrona Baruch.
May her memory be a source of blessing.