University of New England

Where No Bus Explodes: Maria Weinstein, UNECOM Class of '10

[Editor's Note: The following profile appeared in the April 2007 COMmunicator]

“Wars Will All End”

Maria remembers the feeling of war.

In the north, shocked Israeli border guards watched in horror as hundreds of Syrian tanks tore past their positions in plumes of white powder. To the south, just over 400 Israeli soldiers faced 80,000 Egyptian troops as they stormed across the Suez Canal. It was Yom Kippur, Maria remembers – the Day of Atonement, October 6, 1973 – a day the dusty streets of all Israel had emptied and commerce shut down for the nation’s ancient and introspective contemplation. Of all the Jewish holy days, this was the holiest. It was a day for peace and reconciliation; no one expected war.

“I remember being taken into a shelter,” Maria says, fishing for the few memories that rise to feed from the pool of a five-year-old’s mind. She lived in Bat-Yam, just outside Tel Aviv, not far from where Syrian tanks plunged across the northern border and quickly rolled over bewildered Israeli soldiers. “My mother had blond hair and green eyes,” she says, “My uncle was conscripted. When he left to fight, he told me that I would never need to join the army, that this would be the last war; that wars would all end. He lied.”

Knocked on their heels, Israeli Defense Forces dug in and held on until reserves could be mobilized and thrown into the fight. After several bloody weeks, most of the Syrian and Egyptian armor was destroyed. Nearly 3,000 Israeli soldiers also died. It was Maria’s first memory of war.

“If you were quiet, you could maybe leave”

Born in Soviet Ukraine, Maria and her family were allowed to immigrate to Israel in 1972. “The Soviets did not allow many Jews to leave,” Maria says, her accented English very good, “but if you were quiet, you could maybe leave.” She came from a small family, but then again, most families in post-war USSR were small. More than 30 million Russians had died in Stalin’s Purges and in World War II. “My grandparents were the only survivors of the war in my family,” Maria recalls. Her mother was a pharmacist; Maria did not know her father. She was an only child.

When the small family arrived in Israel, Maria felt safe among a nation of fellow Jews. She was surprised, then, when because of her mother’s fair complexion some Jews called her “goy.” In Ukraine they had never been anything but “Yid” – “Jew.” Still, there was a charm and peace to the still-young Jewish State; a flushed surprise from its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. “The mothers would call the children in to supper in the evening,” Maria smiles, “We also went to school to read the Hebrew Writings and learned English. It felt normal.”

During the Yom Kippur War, Maria herself never felt in danger. Perhaps it was because she was merely a child. But Maria thinks that it was a different war in those days, a traditional war with defined borders and combatants. “The population was not greatly affected during the war,” she says, “It was the army that did the fighting. In later wars, even civilians had to carry gas masks and atropine.”

The next war did not start as a war. “It began as an ‘operation,’” Maria says wryly, wrinkling her nose, “an operation into Lebanon.” IDF forces invaded the border area of southern Lebanon in 1982, intent on rooting out Palestinian and Syrian-influenced fighters who were lobbing katyusha rockets into northern Israel. Yasser Arafat’s Fatah militants had also attempted to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to England, Shlomo Argov, which further made them a stench in the nostrils of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Commanded by hard-charging Ariel Sharon, the Israelis established a wide swath of occupied territory in the south of Lebanon to curb indirect fire on Israeli settlements. The Occupation, as it became known, cost both sides greatly. “My uncle fought in that war, also,” Maria says. It was the next in a series of wars to end all wars.

Thrown into the Sea

When Maria was 16, her mother died of ovarian cancer. Before her death, she willed Maria their little condo in Bat-Yam. “My grandfather helped support me financially until I graduated from high school,” she says, “but for the most part I was on my own.” Alone in the world, Maria developed an intense personality that coupled with her native tenacity to complete tasks no matter the cost. “I don’t make excuses,” she says matter-of-factly, “and I don’t let others make them, either. Don’t tell me ‘I can’t’ - You can. If you are thrown into the sea, at least start to swim. God helps those who help themselves.”

In that sense, Maria is a microcosm of her land. Due to its contorted history, unfriendly neighbors (some of whom would very much like to see it thrown into the sea), and small population, Israel instituted universal conscription from its very first days of statehood. Maria herself was drafted into the army at 18, despite her uncle’s assurances that she would never need to join. How could he have known what the future would bring?

The IDF was a different sort of life for independent-minded Maria. “The Army did not understand that I was living on my own,” Maria recalls, “and I went home one weekend to my apartment and the washing machine broke and flooded the rooms. The Army did not realize that I had no one to wash my uniforms. When I returned to base, I had to clean even more.”

Army life was not all bad, however. Maria worked for the intelligence arm of the military and learned to draw maps, a skill she was able to convert after the end of her two years of compulsory service. “I drew electrical maps,” she says, “and I also worked in the library and at a hotel as a receptionist. I did anything I could to make some money.”

Her uncle, now a colonel, suggested that Maria become a pharmacist as her mother had been. “This he said even though I knew since I was six that I wanted to be a doctor and nothing else,” Maria sighs. Why did her uncle ignore her dreams? “He thought a woman should be a pharmacist, not a doctor,” Maria says, “He thought that she should work normal hours, that being a doctor was a difficult life.” She laughs now, but she went to pharmacy school in Jerusalem - “And hated it!” What else could she do?

An Ominous Turn

It tortured Maria’s soul to complete her pharmacy degree and begin working with bottles and pills when what she really wanted was to study human muscles and joints and learn about anatomy. “To become a doctor is a calling,” she says wistfully, “You feel it in your bones.” She was a pharmacist by occupation, but not vocation – Latin “vocatio” means “calling” – and resigned herself to a quiet and dull life in Bat-Yam. Then things got interesting.

“I met my husband on a blind date,” Maria giggles, “After two months we set a wedding date, and seven months later we were married. He’s my soul-mate.” Maria was no longer alone, and in short order the couple had two children. “My Russian friends would have said, ‘Two children!’” Maria laughs, “In Russia, one child is a big family.” Things were looking brighter for Maria, and the Weinsteins were very happy together. There was only one minor problem: The buses kept exploding.

It is nothing to joke about, certainly, but there is grim irony when Maria speaks of the intifada and its devastating toll on the civilian psyche in Israel. “The first Palestinian uprising began before the Gulf War,” she recalls, “and continued for about four years.” Palestinian youths, furious over perceived Israeli atrocities, burned tires, threw Molotov cocktails, and attacked Israeli soldiers and police. Those activities, however, achieved little or nothing to change the plight of the impoverished and stateless Palestinian people, and desperate militant tactics took an ominous turn in the mid-1990s.

“Buses began to explode around Tel-Aviv,” Maria remembers, “and they kept exploding.” Suicide bombers mingled with civilians and soldiers on double-decker buses and detonated their vests during rush hour traffic. News channels flashed scenes of charred corpses and smoking scraps of clothing, or handbags, or bloody baby shoes. No one knew when the next bomber would strike – every Israeli felt a target. “It was one thing when it was just me,” Maria shakes her head, “but when you have children and there is a bombing, suddenly you look to see if your child is hurt. I couldn’t take it any more. It was no way to live.”

“You don’t say ‘no’ to Harvard”

The Weinsteins talked it over, and the family decided to move to the United States, where no bus explodes. “I told my son, ‘Out of all your toys, pick one to take with you,’” Maria remembers, “It was the same for us. We gave away all our plates, all our silverware, all the basics of life. We let everything go and showed up in the United States with just a few suitcases.” Maria received a student visa and went to study at UCLA. “I only knew of a few schools in the States,” she says, “and when I finished at UCLA, I was accepted to a graduate program at Harvard.” She pauses, then smiles, “You don’t say ‘no’ to Harvard!”

The family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, then bumped around the state for a bit to find more affordable housing, and Maria finished her Master’s in Pharmacology at Northeastern while working mornings at the Children’s Hospital. They had another child, their third – scandalous! – and Maria was offered a position by a major retail chain which desperately needed pharmacists in Maine. She accepted, and the Weinsteins moved to the quiet Pine Tree State, a place they had never heard of in Israel.

While in Maine, Maria earned her PharmD. degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, completing her courses online and on weekends while holding down a demanding full-time job and raising a family. How did she do it? Maria clenches her jaw and says, “If you want to do something, you can do it. You find a way to do it. Period.”

Rude Awakening

One of the things Maria wanted to do was become a physician. Period. She began searching for medical schools, and when she discovered osteopathic medicine, she was sold. “I wanted to go to an osteopathic school for a number of reasons,” she says, “I’m a pharmacist, so I know what drugs can do to people; I prefer homeopathic and herbal remedies. Also, my PCP was Dr. John Comis, UNECOM ’96, and I loved how he treated my family. Plus, I wanted to stay local. I said, ‘If God wants, I will be accepted.’ When I was accepted, I was so happy – I could barely speak for weeks.”

When she thinks of medical school, a slight smile crosses Maria’s lips and little wrinkles crease her cheeks. “I thought it would be an enlightenment,” she chuckles, “as if I would come to class like a vessel to be filled with knowledge. But now I know that it is a partnership; you have to take responsibility and work hard. Eventually, you realize that you’re learning all the time.”

Some of her favorite experiences, in retrospect, were in Anatomy. “It is a privilege to see the human body,” Maria says, “what an incredible gift these people [body donors] make. I took my children to see the BodyWorld exhibit in Boston, and I could explain to them what we saw, and why the male and female bladders were the same size even though they looked different.” 

One Redneck, and One Hippie

It seems wonderful to Maria that her yearning to become a physician is finally bearing fruit in a strange land. And sometimes strange is precisely the word for it. “We didn’t realize that my husband was a redneck until we got to the U.S.!” she cackles, delighted by the sudden realization, “One redneck, and one hippie, that’s us!”

Probably the greatest difference between Israel and the United States, Maria thinks, is the culture of opportunity in America. “Here if you work hard, if you have a talent, you can go anywhere,” she says, “In Israel, it’s who you know.” She also thinks that the United States has gotten a bad rap in the global marketplace of public opinion. “People who say that Americans don’t care don’t know anything,” she fumes, “We were overwhelmed with support when we came here. The government even helps me to go to medical school!”

“In Israel,” Maria muses, “the people are xenophobic, as if everyone who is not a Jew is going to kill us. But when I came to the United States, non-Jews were the ones who helped us the most. The love we have received in Maine from people who didn’t even know us is incredible. The day-care people gave us a box full of turkey and gifts for Hanukah. I cried. The woman even apologized that it was in Christmas wrapping paper. Who cares? That was so nice.”

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better

Her cheeks flush when Maria thinks of discussions in her classes about the future of healthcare in the United States. “Socialized medicine is not a good idea,” she says, “I’ve been there. In socialism, not everyone is equal – If you have money or connections you are more equal than others. It’s like in Animal Farm when they say, ‘Four legs good, two legs better.’ That’s not equality.”

Maria is not yet sure what she will become. Despite her uncle’s prognostication, she does not mind “weird hours,” and she doesn’t like to limit her options. Currently, “It’s like the ‘flavor of the month’ ” Maria jokes, with OBGYN or Neurology first among equals at the moment (OBGYN good, Neurology better?). She plans to complete a rotation with a neurosurgeon this summer, which should help give her more direction.

In the meantime, she has dyed her hair purple – “I’m Jewish, so we don’t do bungee jumping or anything crazy like that,” she laughs, “and I wanted to leave a part of myself unique, but reversible” – and she wakes every morning inspired that she is becoming a physician. “You should be happy when you get out of bed,” Maria states, as if it is the law of the land. “I want to be like ‘Wow!’ every day.” 

And free to ride the bus.

-Steve Smith, RSAS