Fill the Cup

After the Shabbos meal following his beloved older brother Yosef’s bar mitzvah, Yosef went for a walk with friends on the West Side. During the walk, Yosef was tragically struck by a vehicle. He passed away instantly.

This haunted my father every day; he could not forget it. Meeting someone else named “Yosef” was always a brutal reminder of his brother Yosef’s tragic passing. My father was so drawn to the name that on a visit to Eretz Yisrael, he went to Yosef Hatzaddik’s kever in Shechem, a destination that was not in vogue at the time.

After my father married, he desperately wanted to name a child after his brother. However, the rabbanim that he consulted advised against it, claiming it would be bad mazel to name a child after someone whose life had been truncated so suddenly and cruelly. No one in the family was ever called Yosef, and my father continued to mourn.

Twenty-six years after the tragedy, for the first time since that heartbreaking day, my grandmother had a dream about her deceased son. It was a Friday night and Yosef came to her in the dream and said, “Mama, tonight is a simchah. Fill the cup and let it run over.” My grandmother woke up very shaken, as she was unaware of any simchah.