July 27, 2024
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Linking Northern and Central NJ, Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester and CT

Two Remote Mikvahs in the American West To Honor Victim of Meron Tragedy

(Courtesy of Chabad.org) Everyone who encountered Yossi Kohn remembers his smile. Even after he lost his father to a car crash at the age of 7, he continued to bring joy to others, say family members. Last year, minutes after the 22-year-old prayed at the resting place of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai on Lag B’Omer, he found himself among the first of 45 victims to be knocked down by the crushing crowd. Laying face down with many more piled on his back, he summoned his strength to lift his body up so that young Shmuel Chayut, who was pinned under him, would be able to breathe and survive with minor injuries. “We were under everyone,” recalled his father, Avigdor Chayut, in a letter to Kohn’s mother, Chaya Gitty Kohn. “… in those moments, he thought about the one beneath him. I shouted to Yossi, ‘Is everything OK?’ Yossi was smiling and he said, ‘K, OK.’” And even in his passing, he is surely smiling with pride observing the broad and diverse group of Jews who have come together to build two mikvahs in his memory—one in Boise, Idaho, and the other in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

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