Yona Cohen
Three members of three generations of the Cohen family—grandmother, son, and granddaughter, Yona, Ohad, and Mila—each had different birthdays, but they all died on the same day, October 7, 2023. Yona was 73, her son Ohad 43, and his daughter Mila was a baby not yet a year old.
Yona was born in Jerusalem, the second child of Sami and Rosa Levy, sister to her elder brother Jacques and her younger sister Varda. She grew up on Agrippas Street, where her parents ran the well-known Sami restaurant. Her parents worked long hours outside the home. Yona and her siblings learned to be independent at a young age. In her childhood, she told her children, she was so thin that the wind would send her flying as she walked up Agrippas Street to school.
Her family later moved to Tel Aviv, where Yona attended the Alliance Française school. She was a quiet girl and a hardworking and diligent student who loved to read. As a teenage athlete - she related - she could run as fast as her classmate, the future Israeli champion and Olympic sprinter Esther Shahamorov. After graduation, she enlisted in the Nahal Corps and, along with her high-school boyfriend, David, joined the “gar'in,” (the nucleus) - the collective of soldier-pioneers who founded Be’eri. They were married after completing their military service. The young couple began their life together in Petah Tikva, where their three sons were born—Itay, Ido, and Ohad.
The members of the Be’eri gar'in refused to give up on Yona and David and entreated them to return. They did, in 1982. Ohad, the youngest son, found it difficult to get used to sleeping in the children’s house, and often ran away to his parents’ home at night. Yona considered leaving, but the family was swathed in the love of their old and new friends. It was that love that tipped the scale in favor of the kibbutz. The birth of their daughter Danielle, and the addition of Ro’i, for whom the Cohens became an adopted family after he arrived at Be’eri as a member of a youth movement detachment, expanded the family. There were now five children, four boys and a girl. The home was joyful and warm. Yona showered the family with Ladino endearments and was renowned for her skill as a cook and baker.
Yona loved kibbutz life and the kibbutz loved her. She was a natural of the old school in her work with children, forming strong and loving ties with her charges that endured for years into their adulthood. For ten years, she and her good friend Hezi ran Be’eri’s procurements and disbursements of food and supplies, ending her term as radiant and beloved as on the day she began. Her next position was as a kibbutz bookkeeper. She loved the work and the people she worked with, and stayed on the job even after she retired, up to her final day.
Yona was goodhearted and loved life, and had a broad and jubilant smile. She knew how to make everyone around her happy. Israeli and Greek music were a special passion; she and her brother Jacques liked to go to tavernas together. But more than anything else she enjoyed reading new books, getting up in the morning for a walk or a gym workout, going to plays and films, spending time with friends, and to travel around the world. She made frequent visits to her grandchildren and children overseas—Ido’s family: Ellen, Zoë, Anuk, and Eden; and Itay’s family: Keren, Ariel, and Eleni; and to her youngest, her daughter Danielle and Amir. And, of course, there were Ohad and Sandra, who lived on the kibbutz with their children Liam, Dylan, and little Mila, whom she saw almost every day. Yona valued family togetherness and was good at fostering it.
Yona’s story is the story of the kibbutz. She never left when it was under attack. “If I die,” she told her worried family, “it will be here at home and not anywhere else.” With an optimism that now seems frighteningly naïve, she added: “And what can happen to us, really?”
May her memory be blessed.
Prayer - Avraham Chalfi
I don’t know the words from which prayer is born.
All words are lost to my voice, have become a mute darkness.
But my eyes still see the spark in the eyes of a child, and my eyes still see:
A star of unmatched brilliance, and worried-faced mothers steering their small ones to the light.
What will be with them? What will be?
Listen to their breathing joy in the spring,
which seems as if it will never end.
I will bow before the role of God even if he has vanished from my eyes.
Do no wrong to the innocent,
they do not know why lightning strikes a fruit-bearing tree.
Do no wrong to the innocent.
They do not know why man desecrates his image.
I don’t know the words from which prayer is born.
All words are lost to my voice, have become a mute darkness.
