Cohen, Eli

Ben Leslie Janis and Mitchell Ira Cohen, brother to Daniel and Alyssa. Born in Haifa on June 4, 1986, grew up in Kibbutz Ein Hashofet. He did his elementary studies at the Kishon school on Kibbutz Ramat David, and from there to the Alon Center in Kibbutz Alonim. Eli was a special child – special in his perception of the world, unusual in his curiosity and sensitivity, unconventional in the questions that preoccupied him and his philosophical approach to life, and in general. From an early age he showed great interest in animals, and during his years in kindergarten he often asked questions about them. Eli was very interested in the size and strength of different animals, and the more he learned about them, the more questions he asked, such as: “Who is stronger – a dinosaur or a rhinoceros?” Or “Who is bigger – a hippopotamus or a whale?” With a polar bear, who will win? ” His parents note that the animals Eli was interested in were always those who lived in different environmental conditions from one another or at other times, and that there was no connection between them. “When we explained it to him,” they say, “he insisted that this is the reason for all his questions.” Snakes beat me up from his early childhood, and he was just fascinated by them. Once, on one of the days off, Flor Lustig, who was responsible for the children’s farm on the kibbutz, brought a snake to the animal corner. The children were invited to hold a snake and photograph themselves wrapped around their arms and shoulders. Eli was delighted, and in the picture that commemorated the moment, he seemed to be holding a snake and grinning from ear to ear. In another photograph Eli appears holding the fossil of a snake he found while hiking, and chuckles. Bali was a very soft, tender side. His life was full of small acts of kindness and kindness-acts he had never spoken of, and some of which had been revealed to his family only after his death. The adoption story of his cat “Ferenczi”, when he was only seven years old, illustrates the fact that Eli is a messenger of grace. He found Ferenczy, wounded in her leg, unable to walk. He kept asking his parents if he could keep her until they agreed. Her name was taken by Ferenczi because of the way she moved. Thanks to the devotion with which Eli treated her and the infinite love he lavished on her, the cat recovered and learned to walk again. Eli loved to read. Since he was dyslexic, his mother continued to read to him throughout his middle school years, and together they read countless books. For a while I enjoyed the book series “Goosebumps,” as Lesley tells us: “We started reading it at the age of nine or ten, but after reading twenty-five or thirty of these books, Eli told me he did not want “They are always the same, they always have a brother and sister, one of them is older than the other, and one of them is brave, while the other is afraid of everything.” Their parents always leave for a weekend or a week and they always stay Alone at home, with some strange problem, they always solve it before their parents come home. “Indeed, Eli was right, he understood the formula of success that the author used to “I was very pleased that Ellie had noticed this and I told him so, and I was glad that he preferred to read more sophisticated literature.” Later on, Eli and his mother began to read “The Hobbit.” Eli liked the book, To read The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the entire series was called for almost two years, “We read the Silmrillio,” Leslie relates. “We were very pleased when the Lord of the Rings movie version came to the screen not long after We finished reading. I noticed that Eli understood and remembered a great deal of what was told in the books and was able to comment on the differences between the books and the versionsCinematic. “Collecting was one of Eli’s hobbies, and he began as a young boy, where he often spent time with his brother, collecting seashells and bringing them home, and whole bags of their bags were stored in the house … When Eli was in third grade , The children began to play with “pogs” – illustrated cardboard discs in a variety of colors and shapes, with the goal of collecting as many as possible, and quickly became preoccupied with the children’s society. “Pogies,” which were stored in a special file bought by his parents, which he kept for many years until he was eighteen years old And the kibbutz, and a separate collection. Leslie: “Once, when Eli was in junior high school, I read him an article from a magazine for children dealing with children collect various collections. Since Eli also had many collections, I thought he would find interest in the article and indeed it was. His response to the article stunned me. In the article there was a paragraph presenting the subject, followed by three paragraphs, each describing a collection of a particular child accompanied by a photograph. When I finished reading the article, Eli immediately asked: “Where is the rest?” ‘what do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘Where is the rest of the article?’ He demanded to know. ‘You know – this part at the end tells us about the whole thing.’ Eli did not know the words ‘abstract’ or ‘summary’, but was aware of the parallel literary structure and knew that the article was not supposed to end here, without a paragraph ending. I told him that he was right – that the article had to end with a paragraph of summation. I also told him that I was very proud of him for noticing that the concluding paragraph was missing, because at that time I had taught writing courses at the college and one of my lessons was devoted to the structure of a multi-paragraph article. ‘Many of my students have never understood the idea,’ I said to him, ‘and here you are, getting them, at your age!’ “Eli was gifted by gold, with a fertile imagination and fertile creativity, and he used to build and sculpt various materials. : A small wooden table and chair, and clay sculptures, but above all, he is remembered for his unique sense of humor and because of his ability to make people laugh and bring them to tears: “Eli was a very cute boy. I used to sit next to him during meals. At every meal he used to sit and tell us stories. His imagination was so rich! He told us about Shabbat dinners at home, where the cheese would fly and something like that would fly to him; in short, in his stories, everything would fly! Once he told us how the cheese cake flew straight into Mitch’s face [Eli’s father]. In other words, through his funny stories he could do a lot of pranks. During meals he used to chat a lot. He liked to make us laugh. Eli’s 15-year birthday was engraved in his memory as one of the most exciting events of his adolescence: Eli, who was then studying at the Kishon School, used to travel to him every day on a regular ride, together with his friends “I thought about how to surprise him, and decided to buy him a special birthday cake. The night before my birthday, I went to Oz’s house and left the cake. I asked Maoz to bring the cake to school the next day without telling Eli what was inside the box. Oz is a wonderful storyteller and he invented a great story, as I knew he would do! When Eli got into the minibus, Oz told him, ‘Hold back the box very carefully. It contains a birthday cake for one of the teachers. You must hold it because you are much more careful than I am. ‘ When they arrivedAnd to school, Oz and me carefully carried the box to the teachers’ room. During the break, Oz took Eli to the teachers’ room to make sure the cake was okay. All the children were waiting there, and when the two entered, everyone roared, ‘Surprise!’ An additional anecdote about Eli was provided by Grandmother Mary, who told Leslie, aged six or seven, what he would have done if he had had a million dollars. Buying socks, millions of socks! So many socks you could stretch around the world! “Leslie:” I wonder why he was so interested in socks? In any case, he seemed to be interested in socks all his life. After his death, we found dozens of pairs of military socks in his room. “Eli joined the IDF on November 29, 2004 and served in the 601 Battalion of the Engineering Corps. Here too, in the army, he stood out in his gentleness, his courtesy, and his amusing humor. His friend, Roni Roushansky, says: “All of us used to sit with all his friends from the unit and he would joke about the smallest things.” He once raised a thin mustache because he found that according to the rules and orders of the army, But he must have permission to grow a beard, so he grew a mustache until one of the officers ordered him to shave him … or he used to go into a room full of people with a red flower decorating his ear, sometimes he would come in with the mustache and the flower together, It was funny, he did all sorts of little tricks to make us laugh, he was very special, no doubt about it. ” Yiftah, another friend, tells the story of the “waffle tree”: “It was at the end of the course for advanced training – after we had been in the army for eight months, we were at the base of the Baf Lachish [sounds like” Wafer Hill ” ‘). One day when we were there, we went to the grocery store to buy food and drink, and Eli had a passion for waffles, but there were no wafers in the shop, and he said, ‘How can a waffle hill not have wafers?’ When we arrived at our base in Ramallah, he decided to plant a ‘waffle tree’ so that we would never know another shortage of waffles, so he took a sump, filled it with soil and planted a few Every day he goes to the pot and watered the waffles, telling everyone that sooner or later there will grow a tree and a waffle … ‘” “I arrived at the base for a while after Eli planted the waffle tree,” said Eliran, “and I saw the plank with a sign saying, ‘Do not you dare ask!’ Then I heard the story and he kept coming back. ” Another memory of Eli, who attests to his sensitivity and kindness, says Itamar, one of the unit’s medics: “When I only got to the base, I could not find my backpack, when we were all supposed to move from the Golan Heights to the Estra outpost. He saw my bag but no one saw it, I asked Eli and he said, ‘No, but I’ll help you find it.’ We looked for him everywhere and finally Eli asked, ‘Is that it?’ It happened about three weeks after I got to the base, so Eli was the first person to help me, the first one I approached, and he helped me to the end, and he realized that I had no friends yet. ” Staff Sergeant Eli Cohen fell in the line of duty on Monday, May 18, 2007, and he is twenty years old. He was laid to rest in the cemetery in his kibbutz, Ein Hashofet. Survived by parents, brother and sister. A year after his death, Eli’s mother received a letter from the kibbutz that wanted to share it with her in a random meeting she had with Eli, which left her impression: “Early in the morning, long ago,I went to the kibbutz gas station and could not find the handle that opened the lid of the locked gas tank of my car. I was very tired and impatient to get home and go to sleep. It was clear that there was no one around to turn to for help, when suddenly – out of nowhere – he appeared to me, with his charismatic smile and good eyes, and without a word understood exactly what I was looking for. I do not remember what kind of car I drove, but where the handle was placed was very unusual. This memory is so strongly engraved in my memory that every time I take an unfamiliar vehicle to the gas station to fill it with fuel, I just know that Eli will appear to help me. It was the first and last time I met Eli and that will always be in my memory. “