Gideon Black

Imagine you are standing on a beautiful white sandy beach. The bright sun blazes down on you from the deep, blue cloudless sky. You can hear the waves crashing onto the shore from the clear, calm, blue sea. Not too many yards in front of you there is a ship spreading her white sails to the moving breeze. It starts forward for the blue ocean. The ship is an object of beauty and strength. You stand on the beach and watch her, until after quite some time she is only a ribbon of white cloud, just where the sea and sky come to mingle way in the distance.

Suddenly there is someone at your side saying “That’s it, she’s gone!” You reply immediately “Gone? Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. The ship is just as grand as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is now in me, not in her.” And just at the moment when someone at your side says “That’s it, she’s gone” there are voices on the other side of the horizon, ready to take up the glad shout of “Here she comes!”

And that is dying. The Jewish way is to believe that there is a world beyond the grave. That death is a narrow starlit strip between the business of yesterday and the reunions of tomorrow. As in the story – as the ship passes out from us standing on the sandy beach, it slowly comes into sight for others some way far ahead. And so with death – leaving this world we enter into the world to come.

The ship represents life. The sea represents the tests and currents that life throws at you. The captain guides the ship through the sea, carefully steering it to avoid all sorts of obstacles. So let me enlighten you as how Yoni sailed his ship through the sea of his life.

Yoni was a doer, always active, he frowned upon passivity. This was evident from a very young age. When Yoni was three, his family lived in Givat Mordechai in Yerushalayim. Yoni’s mother, my aunt, was looking for him in their apartment but she could not find him. She thought he was playing hide and seek, but because he was so smart she never knew where he was even though their apartment was small. After frantically looking everywhere she looked out the kitchen window and saw little Yoni standing at the bus stop at the bottom of their street. She ran out the house, down the street and caught Yoni just as he was stepping on to the bus. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, didn’t have any money to pay for the bus ride, his rucksack didn’t even have anything in it. When she asked him what he was doing he said “Mummy, I want to go to Gan, I want to DO something.” He didn’t want to sit at home like other toddlers, he wanted to go out and do.

And so he did growing up in Glasgow. He did all his schoolwork the night he received it, aced every test and was every teacher’s favourite pupil. But his love for Israel, Judaism and helping other people was best seen by his contribution to the Jewish community. Just listen to this: He was Rosh of Scottish Bnei Akiva, he arranged and ran youth services in shuls on Shabbat, he leined nearly every week, he taught boys their Bar Mitzvah Parsha, he was a Shomer for Kashrut at various Seudot and Smachot in Glasgow. Yoni was also a member of the Chevra Kaddisha, (the burial society), which usually is unheard of for someone still a teenager. In addition, Yoni was the Jewish representative on the Scottish Youth Parliament, and despite all his hard work he still managed a nightly chavruta with the Av Bet Din in Glasgow’s Kollel. Yoni really touched everyone he met, both young and old. Be they his chanichim who loved him and learnt so much from him, or his grandparents whom he loved dearly and would visit regularly, always helping them in any way he could. 1000 people came to a memorial service for Yoni two weeks ago in Glasgow, considering there are only 5000 Jews in the whole of Scotland, this pays fitting testimony to the man he was.

In Britain, the summer before one comes to Israel after they finish school many people have the custom to go on holiday with friends. People go hiking, some go overseas, I went backpacking around Europe. Yoni didn’t come. Not because he didn’t want to, he would have loved to, but he had more important things to do. There are no Jewish high schools in Scotland, but to ensure that Jewish students in these schools get some religious education, once a week someone from the Jewish community visits these schools and gives a shiur during lunch break. Yoni often did this. However he realised that by his coming to Yeshiva they may have difficulty finding people able to do this chesed. So for that summer whilst everyone else was having fun, Yoni sat in an office and wrote a year and a half’s worth of shiurim, so that in his absence anyone could go in and give a shiur that Yoni had prepared.

Yoni loved people from all backgrounds. He had non-Jewish friends, Jewish friends who weren’t religious, friends from Bnei Akiva and Chareidi friends. Yoni was not a political Zionist, he was not left wing or right wing. He simply personified Am Yisrael B’Eretz Yisrael Al Pi Torat Yisrael. In the words of his brother Ari at the Levaya “It was his love of Israel that brought him here, and because of his love if Israel it is here we lay him to rest.”

In Yeshiva, Yoni was a complete matmid. He learnt during both the lunch and supper breaks. Just last year he completed Mesechet Kiddushin and Seder Zrayim in Mishnayot. He also learnt 10 of the 14 books of Mishneh Torah, and the only reason why he didn’t finish it all last year was because he decided to learn the Mishnayot relevant to the parts of Mishneh Torah that he had not yet learnt, so that he would have a more thorough background when he did learn them.

One of Yoni’s best friends in Yeshiva was Massoud, the laundry man. How many of us ever stopped and had a conversation with him? I never have. But because Yoni had such a love for people for him it was natural. They actually got so friendly that Massoud invited Yoni and his father for Seder night last Pesach.

I heard from Chief Rabbi Sacks an idea, which I think is very applicable to who Yoni was. It says the following in Shmot 2:12 regarding Moshe’s reaction to seeing an Egyptian man fighting with an Israelite;

"Vayiphen ko vacho vayar ki eyn ish vayach et hamitzri vayitmneyhu bachol."

He turned this way and that AND SAW THERE WAS NO MAN, so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. What does it mean, and saw there was no man? Of course there were people around? Moshe realised that there was no person who was man enough, no person who had the courage to come to the aid of the poor Jew and defend him against his attacker. As Chazal say “In a place where there is no man, strive to be a man.” This, said Rabbi Sacks, is the challenge to the youth of today. TO BE THAT MAN. To realise when something needs to be done in the community, and then to go and do it. I think Yoni was the perfect example for us of someone who was that man. He was someone who had the moral clarity and the motivation to do what needed to be done, anywhere anytime.

Before I finish, I would like to share with you the final two acts that Yoni did on that Thursday morning, before we departed on our journey to Tel Aviv. In the morning, Yoni, Natan Rickman and I, davened at a shiva house for one of our friends who lost his father to cancer. When it came to Kriyat HaTorah, there was nobody to lein. Yoni stepped forward and leined Vzot HaBracha flawlessly. I thought this was very symbolic and very fitting, that Yoni read the last parsha in the Torah on his last day.

Three weeks before Yoni’s death, we were learning together one day. He was spinning a pen in his hand, and upon realising it wasn’t his, became very concerned as to whose pen it was. He then remembered that a day earlier, he was in a second hand book shop with his father, and after signing a cheque to pay for the books must have accidentally slipped the 5 shekel pen into his pocket. Three weeks later, on the way home from the shiva house, we were walking near the centre of town. Yoni asked us to wait on the street corner for five minutes as he had something he needed to do. He returned five minutes later with a smile on his face, so glad he had returned the pen. He had kept in with him whenever he was in Jerusalem for the last three weeks, and thus on his final morning he fulfilled the mitzvah of Hashavat Aveida - such was his concern for other people, and their property.

On behalf of Yoni’s family I would like to thank you all. From the moment people heard we were rushed to hospital until the family went back to Britain ten days later, the Roshei Yeshiva, Rabbanim and Talmidim were at Yoni’s bedside, then helping make arrangements for the Levaya and after that making countless visits to the hotel to be with the family. Even guys in Shiur Gimmel came from their bases all around the country to visit. This was real Nichum Aveilim. Yoni’s family never knew much about Yoni’s life after he left home to come to Yeshiva. But after meeting all the Rabbanim and Talmidim, I can tell you honestly that they feel so comforted knowing that this is where Yoni spent the final part of his life.

The loss is a great one. To the Jesner family, to me, to Glasgow’s Jewish community, to British Bnei Akiva, to Yeshivat Har Etzion, to University College London where Yoni will no longer study medicine, to the woman he will no longer marry, to the children who will no longer be able to call him “dad”. They would have considered themselves the luckiest kids in the world.

Yoni’s life was a continuous Kiddush Hashem and he was killed Al Kiddush Hashem. And even after his death, through organ donation he saved the lives of 2 Jewish men and an 8 year old Palestinian girl, and thus again, he made a Kiddush Hashem.

That is my Hesped for Yoni. I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts.

On Ben Yehuda on Motzai Shabbat 1st of December, I was on one side of the street, and to the side of the street which I was about to cross 7 people were killed and countless injured by a suicide bomb. On the 19th of September this year, I was on a bus where 6 people were killed, one of them being my first cousin and best friend, Yoni. This time I was amongst the 60 injured. Excuse me for being graphic, but the bolt that penetrated Yoni’s brain must have just missed my right ear by millimetres. That’s because I was standing in front of Yoni, closer to the bomb. Logically Yoni should be the one standing here, not me but G-d decided it was Yoni’s time and not mine. How should this affect me? The answer is, as of yet, I am not sure. But one thing is for certain, after having been so close to death I can really appreciate how every minute of every day counts. Yoni really used every minute of his day doing things for others. He didn’t have time to watch TV. I sense now more than ever the frailty of our lives, and the imperative to learn from Yoni. What have I learnt? I’ve learnt that G-d decides the quantity of our lives – it is up to us to decide the quality.