“Yossi,” Aryeh told him, “after I reach 120, I want you to be the one to organize something for me”
This week marks the first yahrtzeit of Aryeh Schupak, Hashem yikom damo. Aryeh was a 16-year-old yeshivah bochur learning in Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Harei Yehuda who was killed by a bomb placed by an Arab terrorist at a bus stop.
Friends remember Aryeh as a hardworking, good-natured bochur who wore a perpetual smile, laughing and brightening the atmosphere wherever he went. In the months following his death, one of Aryeh’s friends proposed that they undertake a project l’illui nishmaso. Aside from individual kabbalos, the young bochurim managed to collectively complete all of Shas in time for the yahrtzeit.
Yossi Raskas, one of Aryeh’s closest friends and the driving force behind the Shas campaign, shared the poignant backstory. He recounted how several years earlier he had committed to coordinate learning as a zechus for a niftar. In time, though, the task of assigning limudim to different people and keeping track of where they were holding became cumbersome, and he considered giving it up.
When Aryeh got wind of that, he sat down next to him, and with his trademark smile, encouraged him to continue.
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