Army Medic, Victim of Iraqi Suicide Attack,
Receives Jewish Burial

On July 25, family and friends of Benyahmin Ben Yahudah, a 24-year-old combat field medic who died in Baghdad two weeks earlier, gathered for a unique funeral in Evergreen Memorial Park in Athens, Ga.

The ceremony was presided over jointly by Jacob Goldstein, an Orthodox Jewish chaplain with the Army National Guard, and Elakhaz Hacohane, Ben Yahudah’s uncle, who is a priest with the African Hebrew Israelite community in Israel.

Ben Yahudah, a combat field medic with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, died when a suicide bomber drove into his patrol as it tried to clear out a crowd of children from the area being searched by the army, according to a soldier who spoke at the funeral. Ben Yahudah had reportedly been handing out candy and toys to the children. He was the only American soldier killed in the attack, but close to 20 Iraqi children and teenagers died, too. He was posthumously honored with the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, which is given for “heroic or meritorious achievement” against an armed enemy.

Ben Yahudah grew up in Atlanta’s community of Hebrew Israelites, who claim to be one of the lost tribes of Israel. His mother, Leah, asked the military to prepare her son for burial according to Orthodox Jewish custom. A rabbi at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware oversaw the process. The Army National Casualty Center called in Goldstein, who is a reserve-duty chaplain in New York, to officiate.

In Athens, the graveside service began after Ben Yahudah’s flag-covered coffin was driven a half-mile from the Bernstein Funeral Home to the corner of Evergreen Memorial Park that is dedicated to veterans. According to Goldstein, who accompanied the casket during the procession, fire trucks and police cars blocked the side streets, and passersby got out of their cars and stood at attention. Local restaurants and stores had put memorial messages to Ben Yahudah on their marquees.

At the memorial park, Goldstein, who is one of the only Chabad Lubavitch rabbis in the military service, led the first prayers. He said it was “a military funeral, with some religious bearings,” and so he did not do a full Jewish funeral service. But Goldstein did read psalms in English and quoted from a section of the Talmud that spoke of the way in which good deeds can be carried into the next life. After Goldstein, Hacohane, who is the brother of Ben Yahudah’s mother, spoke. He read Palm 23 in Hebrew and then gave a eulogy for Benyahmin, saying that he was “a hero, not only to his family but to humanity.”

Ben Yahudah’s simple nail-less wooden coffin was carried by military pallbearers, and the burial was accompanied by a 21-gun military salute. Ronald Silverman, a major general with the army’s medical command, spoke briefly and presented Ben Yahudah’s mother with the flag from his coffin.

Ben Yahudah was born at his Bogart, Ga., home September 27, 1980. According to Hacohane, Benyahmin’s mother “came into the knowledge of Hebrewism” through Benyahmin’s father, Absalom Yahudah, who is now deceased. The Hebrew Israelites’ current community came together in 1966 after their spiritual leader, Ben Ammi, had a vision of reconstituting it. The group keeps a vegan diet and observes Jewish holidays.

Hacohane, who lives in Tiberias, Israel, says that Ben Yahudah visited the Hebrew Israelite community there, which is based mostly in the town of Dimona, during the mid-1990s. Because of their religion, Ben Yahudah’s mother and father decided to home-school him and his siblings. Ben Yahudah received his high school equivalency diploma when he was 15, and he went on to study marketing management and electronics at Athens Technical College. After graduating, he moved between odd jobs for a few years — just “being a kid,” according to his half-brother, Kirk Sims. In 2003 he joined the Army and rose to the rank of specialist. Ben Yahudah was dispatched to Iraq in January as a combat field medic, and became known among his fellow soldiers as “Doc.”

In recent months, Ben Yahudah was the medic at the scene of many bombings in the Baghdad area; in mid-May, he managed to save three soldiers in a bombed-out Humvee, but a fourth soldier died. Sims says that during phone calls home, Ben Yahudah would focus on the soldiers he was unable to save.

James Baugh, who served with Ben Yahudah in Iraq, wrote in a message: “Benyahmin was what every medic and every soldier wants to be. He lived his live in a terrific way and he is directly responsible for saving the lives of many of his fellow soldiers.”

The gruesome nature of the attack in which Ben Yahudah was killed sparked widespread outrage in America and Iraq. Al Qaeda denied being behind the bombing.

Ben Yahudah had a fiancée, Anne Armstrong, whom he planned to marry during leave time in October. He is survived by his mother, a half-brother and half-sister — Kirk Sims and Elaine Olga Adams — and four siblings: Shoshanah, Avigail, Bethsheba and Yahosuah.