Inner Light, Outer Shine

This past Shabbos Chanukah, as the neiros Shabbos and neiros Chanukah flickered in harmony, the neshamah of Reb Nosson Nota Yitzchak Hofstedter ascended heavenward.

Reb Nosson Nota Yitzchak (better known as Sandy) was one of those special people whose light shined both inward and outward. His Toronto home was an epicenter of unwavering support of Torah, as well as an endless flow of chesed. But he propelled that light outward as well. As the real estate corporation he built saw unfathomable success in the highest echelons of corporate Canada, as his housing developments expanded and his buildings shaped skylines, the inner flame shone ever brighter.

As his son Reb Dovid said at the levayah, Sandy’s first name was Nosson — a palindrome, reading the same both backward and forward. And that’s how Reb Sandy was — backward and forward, able to unite such divergent influences, the ner Shabbos and ner Chanukah flickering simultaneously throughout his lifetime.

Reb Sandy was escorted on his final journey by scores of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — among them talmidei chachamim of the highest order, authors of seforim, and stalwart supporters of Torah. And the thousands of lomdei Torah supported by his generosity, the countless mosdos he built, are all, in a sense, his children.