With that joy, Yossi carried people. He lit up classrooms, yeshivos, and the gigantic world of the Mir
We knew his father as Mikey, but in Shamayim he is surely known as Harav Menachem Mendel. He blazed through Telshe Yeshivah and the Cleveland community like a comet of brilliant light. His passion for his Creator, His people, and His Torah lit us all on fire. Fifteen years on from the terrible day he was taken, his life and his legacy are still hot to the touch. He is alive in our hearts because he gave our hearts life.
Reb Menachem wrote a sefer in memory of his father. He called it Ateres Avi. And he left a son to whom he bequeathed his name.
Yosef Yitzchok Aizik.
Yossi.
The boy who grew up in a house bereft of one of its pillars but raised with the unshaken emunah of the other. Reb Menachem left nine children, and Mrs. Chaya Gitty Kohn tichyeh gave the world nine treasured reflections of his greatness.
Yossi was one of those reflections. The passion for life and the heart to share it with anyone he could. An awareness of what he was given by his parents, and the burning ambition to make his mother proud of who he was becoming.
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