Yoni was a ball of fire, crazy and calm in equal measure, sometimes within the same hour. He was the kind of person who would complain for hours about being invited out, then come home at 6 a.m. because he had gone to the beach and decided to walk an hour and a half back, just because he could. That was who he was. He didn’t do things because he was supposed to. He did things because he meant them.
The articles about him gave a good outline: He was an American from Rochester, NY, who converted to Judaism, made aliyah, studied in Israel, volunteered at Magen David Adom, and enlisted in the IDF, despite having no obligation to do so. All true. But it’s an outline – not who he was as a person. And Yoni was too much of a passionate person to be left as an outline or a few fun facts.
Yoni loved deeply and unconditionally. His relationship with his family was complicated; there were fractures, distances, and things left unresolved. But his family was always his priority, no matter what. He gave people chances long after most would have stopped. Not because he was naive, but because he genuinely believed people were worth it. He protected the people he loved without being asked. He didn’t wait to be told what someone needed. He just saw it and acted.
When Yoni was younger, he lost his Uncle Rich to leukemia. In his passing, he lost the closest thing he had to a father at the time. It was one of the most devastating periods of his life. He fought hard to rebuild himself from that grief.
He loved to write. Not for an audience, but for the people he loved
When he eventually wrote his will, he left instructions that all his money be donated to leukemia research. That was Yoni. He took the tragedies in his life and turned them outward into good. In one of his letters, he wrote: “Death did not mean that Uncle Rich somehow disappeared and became irrelevant. Everything he ever taught me became sweeter and more valuable.”
He loved to write. Not for an audience, but for the people he loved. Before he was deployed to Gaza, he sat down and wrote letters. Letters to friends, to family, to me. He wrote them knowing they might never be read. He hoped we would never have to open them. He wrote anyway, because that was Yoni. He took care of people even from the page, even from the future, even from the other side of whatever was coming.
By October 2023, Yoni was nearing the end of his service. He had started to see things in the army he didn’t completely agree with. He was thinking about his next chapter, about what came after his military service. He was a thinking person, a questioning person. He didn’t follow anything blindly, not even the things he had chosen with his whole heart.
And then October 7 happened. He called his brother Randy that morning and asked him to keep their mother away from the news. Rockets were falling on Israel. He put his things together and went to serve. No hesitation, no negotiation with himself. Not because the questions had gone away, but because that was who he was despite them. He was there to protect his people and country.
He fell in Khan Yunis on December 8, 2023 – three weeks before his scheduled release; a month before his 26th birthday.
In the letter he wrote to me, he said: “You could take my greatest storms and calm them as the calmest seas. You were my greatest joy in life.”
I’m an olah as well, and I know what it means to choose this place, to build a life here, and navigate the whirlwind that is Israel and its people. We used to sit on his porch floor in Ramat Gan, blankets and pillows pulled around us, despite the couch being right there, and talk until there was nothing left to say. He asked the questions nobody else thought to ask. He made you feel like the most important thing in the room – because to him, you were.
He left letters for everyone he loved. In his last one, on November 16, 2023, three weeks before he was killed, he wrote: “Before I left this world for the next, I smiled. I was ok. I had peace in my heart. I hope that a piece of that spirit will accompany you, too.”
Not a symbol. Not a story. Yonatan Chaim, the light of our life.
The writer met Yoni on his very first trip to Israel. They lived together throughout his years here, best friends until his last day. She writes this as a witness to his story, and as the person who knew Yoni in all his different hats.
Source:
www.jpost.com
