He lost his wife in the 2001 Sbarro bombing- now he turns grief into positivity
US-born Shmuel Greenbaum's pregnant wife was among 16 killed in the Second Intifada attack. Since then, he has dedicated his life into spreading kindness – and hopes to open an amusement park
Twenty-five years after a terrorist attack killed his wife, Shoshana, and their unborn child, Shmuel Greenbaum is choosing to focus on what can still be built from tragedy: a more compassionate and hopeful world.
In an interview with Emily Frances on i24NEWS’ Jewish World Weekly, Greenbaum reflected on the August 9, 2001 bombing at the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, and on the decades-long effort that followed to transform personal loss into a message of positivity.
“I’m always a person looking at the big picture, always looking at what I can do to uplift people,” Greenbaum said. “When you focus on other people, it helps to uplift you.”
A loss that changed everything
Greenbaum was not at the restaurant when the attack took place. He had already returned to his home in New York from Israel several days earlier, leaving on the Sunday before the bombing on Thursday.
The attack killed 16 including schoolteacher Shoshana, and injured a further 160. For Israelis, it is etched in the memory as a symbol of the terror during the second Second Intifada.
Returning to Israel for the 25th anniversary brought the pain close again. Greenbaum described the experience as emotional and powerful, but said his purpose during the visit was not only to remember what had been lost.
“My mission here is to uplift,” he said. “It’s very exciting being here and hopefully helping to uplift, to bring people” together.
That mission has guided his work for the past quarter-century.
Finding strength in stories of kindness
Following the attack, Greenbaum founded 'Partners in Kindness', began sharing stories of people helping one another. For 25 years, he has sent out daily emails, called 'A Daily Dose of Kindness', featuring acts of kindness submitted by people around the world.
The stories gained particular resonance during periods of widespread trauma, including the Second Intifada and the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. At a time when fear and anger dominated the news, Greenbaum found that stories of generosity could offer people another way to understand the world around them.
He said recipients have often told him how deeply the stories affected them, often providing people with genuine emotional support.
One recent incident illustrated how invested readers have become in the daily messages. While rushing to leave his home on the day marking Shoshana’s yahrzeit, Greenbaum accidentally cut a sentence from one of the stories he was preparing to send.
The following day, he received around 20 emails from readers asking what had happened to the missing final sentence.
“They were frantic because they were missing the last sentence in a story,” he recalled. “That just goes to show that they’re really relating to it.”
Faith, science and human connection
Greenbaum’s approach is deliberately inclusive. An Orthodox Jew, his letters are targeted to people of all or no faith.
He believes that stories of kindness can reach people through both faith and science. In discussing his research into the emotional impact of altruism, Greenbaum pointed to oxytocin, a hormone associated with social bonding and feelings of connection.
He stressed that he had not seen conclusive evidence linking the hormone directly to all spiritual experiences. But he said research suggests that acts of kindness, and even witnessing or hearing about them, can generate the same sense of emotional uplift that many people experience through spiritual or religious moments.
For Greenbaum, that creates a bridge between people who practice different religions and those who have no religious faith at all.
“It’s infectious,” he said, describing the emotional effect of kindness and spiritual experience.
A theme park built around positivity
Greenbaum is now pursuing an ambitious idea: a theme park and music park designed to inspire joy, connection and acts of kindness.
The project is still being developed, and Greenbaum acknowledged that some public-relations professionals have asked for a blueprint and business plan. His response was characteristically unconventional.
“Oxytocin is the business plan,” he said.
The idea reflects his belief that faith and inspiration can motivate people on a massive scale. But Greenbaum also recognizes that faith has sometimes been exploited to justify violence. He pointed to the Sbarro attack and the September 11 attacks as examples of terrorism carried out by people claiming religious motivation.
Twenty-five years after losing his family, Greenbaum wants to promote the opposite message.
On the anniversary of the bombing, he said the world should reject the use of faith as a justification for terror and instead draw on faith, hope and belief in humanity to help others.
“We can do just the opposite of what these people are doing,” he said. “We can take our faith and our belief in humankind, even secular people, and use that to uplift the world.”