Bryan Atinsky means business.
As we sit down for our interview, he pulls out a laptop and a spanking new iPad. Both, he claims, contain vital information he feels will be pertinent for this story.
It’s not that he needs any prompting to remember how deep his grief is after tragically losing his wife, Efrat; two children, Noam, 5 and Ya’ari, 9 months; and his mother-in-law, Esther Gamliel, in a car accident here two months ago. That torment is now permanently ingrained in his heart.
However, Atinsky, who grew up in Glendale, has gathered all his remaining strength and poured his grief into striking up a call for action to improve safety on Israel’s roads.
“Road accidents in Israel are the number one cause of deaths but the public and the government seem to be doing very little about it,” states Atinsky, who attended Nicolet High School and University of Wisconsin-Madison before moving to Israel in 1997.
“Everyone here knows what is happening on the roads, they see it every day, it is part of the environment but no one is asking ‘why is this happening?’” he continues.
“People just blame the ‘Israeli’ mentality but it is not that. It is a clear lack of police supervision on the roads and an overall inaction by the government.”
Indeed, Atinsky refers to his laptop, reeling off the data he has picked up over the last two weeks since returning to Israel after spending his initial grieving period at his parents’ house in Milwaukee.
“In 2005, a special committee on road safety made some serious recommendations for improving the roads and increasing police supervision here,” says Atinsky, who has been holding intensive meetings with non-governmental road safety organizations such as Or Yarok (Green Light) and Metuna in order to glean as much information as possible.
“That committee set a very long and specific list of requirements that the Transport Ministry had to address, including increasing the police’s enforcement budget to 160 million shekels a year,” he says.
“But five years later not much has changed. Transport Minister Yisrael Katz even decided recently to cut the budget back down to 65 million shekels.”
In fact, according to Atinsky, under Katz, the number of people killed on the roads has increased, with figures for 2010 already much higher than for the same period last year.
According to the latest statistics from the National Road Safety Authority, so far this year some 150 people have been killed on Israel’s roads, 12 more than for the same months in 2009. While in March, the month when Atinsky’s family was killed, an overwhelming 39 people died.
Since arriving in Israel in early May, Atinsky has worked tirelessly to raise public awareness of the situation, talking openly about his own loss and pain to countless media outlets and even appearing on the popular “Friday Studio with Yair Lapid.”
He has also attempted — but so far to no avail — to meet with high-ranking police officials and even with the Transport Minister, to demand answers.
While the police have yet to file an official report, initial information indicates that the crash, which took place on a two-lane highway in the south, was caused by an army vehicle overtaking another truck in the on-coming lane to the one in which the family was traveling.
The head-on collision caused the Atinsky-Gamliel family’s car to immediately catch fire, killing all the passengers inside.
Atinsky, who had been living for the past year with his family in Athens, Ga., while Efrat worked to complete her post-doctorate at the University of Georgia, was actually in Milwaukee at the time staying with his parents.
“Within an hour of hearing about it, there were 40 people at our house, all from the local Jewish community,” remembers Atinsky. “Although I only have a vague recollection of what happened, I know that congregants from our synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, as well as Rabbi Jacob Herber, Cantor Jeremy Stein and the Chabad rabbi all came.”
Atinsky’s father, Jordy, who (together with wife, Merry) has been accompanying his son during this painful return to Israel, recalls:
“My daughter [who lives in Israel] heard first about the crash. She called my sister and a friend because she did not want us to hear about it over the phone. They came over and pulled me into the bathroom to tell me what had happened.
“When I came out, Bryan was standing there and suddenly the room stopped, everything stopped and then we told him that his whole family had been killed.”
At first Atinsky would not believe it was true and bolted from the house, says his father, recalling how outside Atinsky lay down on the freezing snow “just to be sure that he was still in reality.”
Not long afterwards family, friends and community members started arriving.
“At first, Bryan did not want to talk to anyone, especially rabbis, but everyone was so nice to him,” says Jordy. “They were very respectful of his wishes to not hear or talk about religion.”
In Israel, the horrific crash made headlines and the media highlighted the fact that Atinsky had chosen not to attend his wife and children’s funerals or to sit shiva with his wife’s family here.
“I just couldn’t,” says Atinsky his voice choking. “I just could not think about getting on a plane and flying for 20 hours to see those I love be put in the ground.”
Atinsky acknowledges that being in Milwaukee exactly at the moment of hearing such devastating news was a mixed blessing.
“If I had been in Athens by myself it would have been awful,” he says. “I would have been all alone and I don’t know what I would have done. The fact it happened while I was in Milwaukee meant I got a lot of support from the whole community.
Atinsky says it’s too soon for him to decide whether he will return to live in Milwaukee or move back to Israel permanently but one thing is for certain: “I will continue fighting to raise awareness to road safety here and make sure that the man who destroyed my family stands trial for what he has done.”
Former Chronicle assistant editor, Ruth Eglash is social affairs reporter at The Jerusalem Post.
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