Two teachers among victims in rampage

By · July 2, 2008

Two Jerusalem teachers were among those killed in Wednesday’s terrorist attack.

Bat Sheva Unterman, 33, and Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, 54, were killed in the attack on Jaffa Road, in which an Arab construction worker from eastern Jerusalem deliberately plowed his bulldozer into vehicles and pedestrians, killing three and wounding dozens before being shot dead by an off-duty policeman.

As of late Wednesday, Israeli officials had not yet released the identity of the third casualty in Wednesday’s rampage.

Unterman’s car was crushed by the bulldozer. Her 6-month-old daughter, Efrat, was evacuated just before the vehicle was hit. Unterman lived in Jerusalem’s Rechavia neighborhood and worked as a nanny in a Har Homa kindergarten.

“Until Efrat was born, the children in the kindergarten were like her own, and she was a nanny of the highest excellence, with exemplary patience for each and every child,” her friend Meira Schwartz told Israel’s daily Ha’aretz.

Unterman’s husband, Ido, is the grandson of Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, who served as the chief rabbi of Israel from 1964 to 1973.

Goren-Friedman, a native of Austria, lived in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood and worked as a teacher in a school for the blind. She had three children, aged 16 to 23.

Friends told Ma’ariv that she volunteered regularly at Hadassah Hospital.

“Lili was a wonderful person,” her colleague Rachel Sakrovish told Ma’ariv. “There was not a student that she did not help progress on a personal, educational and rehabilitative level.”