The kibbutz Rabbi Yosef Chaim Hassan left behind had become an entirely different community, thanks to the genuine revolution he fomented, one person at a time.,The Kibbutz He Left Behind,When Rabbi Yosef Chaim Hassan first moved to Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, between Nahariya and the Lebanese border, he was told the kibbutz had no synagogue and would never have one.
“It was enough to make you cry. Many of these youths were putting on tefillin in secret so their parents or teachers wouldn’t see them” —Rabbi Yosef Chaim Hassan z”l
This once staunchly secular kibbutz wouldn’t have had him as a resident either had they known who he really was but when he arrived eight years ago for an interview with the kibbutz’s absorption committee he wore a T-shirt and cap.
When he lost his life in a drowning accident last week off the coast near his home the kibbutz he left behind had become an entirely different community thanks to the genuine revolution he fomented one person at a time.
Rabbi Hassan was named after the Ben Ish Chai. Tragedy seems to run in the family. His father Rabbi Avraham was murdered in 1998 in an armed robbery in Mexico City while collecting funds for a yeshivah.
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