A Life Too Short: Blaze Bernstein Obituary

LAKE FOREST, CA — Remembered by family and adopted by his community, Lake Forest resident Blaze Bernstein died in Lake Forest at the hand of another. According to his parents, Blaze Bernstein was a brilliant teenager with a noticeably sharp sense of humor and a generous and gentle heart. He was often referred to as a “renaissance man” by his family.

He loved cooking, music, art, performing, writing, and experiencing firsthand the beauty of all cultures of the world. Blaze was known as a puzzle solver, quick witted, outstanding communicator, strategic game player, budding scientist, a thoughtful gift giver, a helper, and a volunteer whenever a problem or need arose.

It has been said by those who knew him well, that he had the uncanny ability to tap both the left and right sides of his brain which he did often as an artist and a scientist.

Blaze Nathan Bernstein’s life started in South Orange County, on April 27, 1998.

His mother and father, both native Californians, attended the University of California Santa Barbara where they met in 1987 and later married in Los Angeles in 1992. His father, Gideon Bernstein, went on to become a Chartered Financial Analyst and to manage the portfolio of Leisure Capital Management in Costa Mesa, where he is presently an equity partner. His mother, Jeanne Pepper, earned her law degree in 1995 from the Pepperdine School of Law. She left her litigation practice in 2000 to devote herself completely to caring for Blaze and his siblings. His paternal grandmother, Leah Bernstein, a retired language teacher, was born in Romania in 1936 and is presently one of the few living holocaust survivors. Blaze has two siblings, Beaue age fourteen and Jay age seventeen.

Blaze was named for his grandfathers, Nathan and Chaim, and for the 17th century French polymath Blaise Pascal. The night of his disappearance, his grandfather Richard Bernstein asked him what people thought of his name. He remarked that people asked him about his name, but he didn’t remember the story behind it. He was told the meaning of it that night, when the family explained to him that Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and theologian who pioneered calculating machines and made numerous contributions to science. He smiled and was humbled by the discussion and his parents proudly told him that this was his namesake and they expected great things from him.

Blaze’s communities — both in California and at the University of Pennsylvania — knew him as a polymath, like his namesake, and in his own right.

Blaze graduated from Orange County School of the Arts (affectionately known as “OCSA”), and went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he threw himself into biochemistry, psychology, poetry, community activism and food writing. His work, "Picking Marbles From the Dirt" was published by Penn Review, was published by his university's literary magazine.

Writing gives me my voice, which is why my stories are in a constant state of flux. Even if I don’t change a word or a single letter, they move with me down corridors of memory, through seas of emotion, and into worlds both real and imaginary. As I change, they change, but even after days or months or years I can still find a version of myself (a time traveler from the past, present, or future) sitting there in the text and waiting to speak to me.

A renowned chef and managing editor of Penn Appetit, as well as copy associate for the Penn Review, his favorite recipe for spiced rum and plum cake was passed out to all at his memorial service, Monday, January 15.

“He was one of these kids that absorbed every experience and did something with it,” and “[h]e was not somebody who just went through life, he took experiences as a gift and saw them as part of the whole.” Rachlis, leader of the University Synagogue in Irvine, watched Bernstein grow up.

His parents have been members of University Synagogue since before Blaze was born.

Blaze is remembered by those who knew him and those whose lives he has touched even after his death with the hashtag: #dogood4blaze

Photo, courtesy Gideon Bernstein, via UPenn