Beth Goldstein crossed the finish line just before the first of two bombs shook the streets of Boston on April 15.
It was the third marathon for the 46-year-old San Francisco civil engineer, and her first time competing in the prestigious Boston event.
“I was two blocks away at the gear box, picking up my belongings,” she told j. by phone. “I heard both blasts and turned, and I saw a big column of smoke rising. That was from the second one. I grabbed my cellphone and called my friends who were [watching] at Mile 24.”
The Boston Marathon, held since 1897, is the oldest modern-day marathon. This year’s race had 22,000 registered runners. Thousands of others arrived to volunteer, to cheer on loved ones and to watch race leaders as they crossed the finish line.
The explosions occurred more than two hours after the winners completed the race, around 2:45 p.m EDT. Three people were killed and at least 170 injured, some of them gravely.
In the hours after the bombings, Jewish groups and officials who track such incidents were declining to engage in conjecture given the limited information about the attack.
“We know that unfortunately 30 percent of terrorist attacks had Jewish institutions as
secondary targets,” Paul Goldenberg, the director of the Secure Community Network, the security arm of the national Jewish community, said on April 15. “However, I must stress that there is absolutely nothing here that indicates any connection to an attack on the Jewish community. But based on history, we are standing vigilant for at least the next 48 hours.”
Israel Police Chief Yohanan Danino arrived in the United States with other senior Israeli Police officers on April 16 for a prescheduled trip to discuss enhanced security cooperation between police in the two countries. He reportedly will be discussing the marathon attack in meetings with FBI and law enforcement officials.
Meanwhile, Israeli leaders offered condolences to the United States and President Barack Obama.
“Permit me to express our solidarity with the bereaved families in Boston,” President Shimon Peres said during his Independence Day reception for the foreign diplomatic corps. “I want to send on behalf of all of us our condolences to all the families and wish a speedy recovery to all the injured.
“When it comes to events like this, all of us are one family. We feel a part of the people who paid such a high price. God bless them.”
Egypt and Saudi Arabia also condemned the Boston attack and sent condolence messages to Obama, the Associated Press reported. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood also condemned the bombings and offered condolences, saying that Islamic law does not condone violence against civilians.
Zvika Bronstein, 56, flew from his home in Israel to run in the marathon. “It was a miracle that more weren’t killed because the place was packed,” he told Ynet after the attack.
“I had just finished the marathon and decided to walk back to the hotel, which was about [11⁄4 miles] away,” Bronstein said. “The explosion came from inside a building that was located by the finish line, at the area designated for the crowd of people who had come to watch the runners.”
Bronstein said he knew of 16 Israelis competing in the marathon. “As far as I know, none of us were injured.”
Neil Bernstein, 60, of Swampscott, Mass., was about three or four miles from the finish line when the bombs went off. “We were stopped and told that the race was over,” he said.
Bernstein, who stressed that the bombing “won’t deter me from running next year’s Boston Marathon, or any marathon,” lived in Israel for 17 years and served in a combat unit with the Israeli army.
“If an explosion occurs in Tel Aviv, they clean it up and businesses are open a couple of hours later,” he said. “This is not to show disrespect to those who were injured … [but] you can’t let terror stop life.”
One doctor who dealt with the aftermath of the bombings credited Israeli expertise with his team’s ability to respond quickly and effectively.
“About two years ago we asked the Israelis to come here and they helped us set up our disaster team so that we could respond in this kind of manner,” Alasdair Conn, chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the Algemeiner, a weekly newspaper that covers Jewish and Israel-related news.
Rabbi Yosef Zaklos, the director of Chabad of Downtown Boston, was at the marathon finishing line offering runners and their families the opportunity to put on tefillin when the bombs detonated.
After a few seconds of shock, the 31-year-old rabbi offered assistance to the injured and helped direct people to safety.
“It was horrific,” he said, “but as an individual and member of a religious leadership, you are endowed with the energy and power of the moment to address the needs of people and ask, ‘What can I do? How can I help?’ ”
Zaklos spent the next 24 hours visiting hospitals and offering help to the wounded alongside clergy of other faiths.
San Francisco native Josh Herzstein, 23, was in a friend’s apartment two blocks away when the explosions occurred.
“We heard the first one, and weren’t really sure,” he told j. the next day by phone from Boston, where he works as an architect. His family belongs to Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. “The second shook the building and we heard sirens, so we turned on the news.”
Walking back to his own apartment down empty streets that were usually filled with shoppers was “eerie,” he said.
“People are still in shock, to be honest. They’re having trouble comprehending what happened and what their reaction should be. At the time, I was pretty shaken.”
After sleeping on it, however, Herzstein had a different attitude. “For me, it’s important not to live in fear.”
Beth Goldstein agrees. She said the mood on the streets in the days following the attack was “somber,” but that people were being particularly kind to each other, “looking out for each other, opening doors for each other, calling each other by their first names.” It reminded her, she said, of the mood in San Francisco after the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989, when residents came together.
“This was really hard on Boston as a whole,” she said. “There’s a lot of frustration, a lot of anger that this day had been taken away from them, this day they’re so proud of.”
Will she ever run another marathon, after this week’s tragedy? Not only that, she said, “I’m gonna run Boston again.”
Ynetnews.com, JTA, the Boston-based Jewish Journal and the Cleveland Jewish News contributed to this report.