Cohen, Emanuel (Mano)

Emanuel (Mano), son of Ruth and Benjamin, was born in Rehovot on February 25, 1943. He studied at the Smilansky Elementary School and at the “Tamar” High School in Rehovot, where Mano was a diligent student He had a strong will, In the classroom, he was closed and withdrawn and spoke little, but he was always among the members of the class committee. He had a great collection of stamps and coins. He liked to play chess and even won the youth chess championship in Haifa. In his youth, he wrote poems and stories, but once, when he was upset about his parents reading them in secret, he burned them all and there was no story left. He liked reading books in various fields. Emanuel was drafted into the IDF at the end of September 1961 and assigned to the Nahal Brigade, where he moved to the Signal Corps, where he worked as a radio operator and a responsible and dedicated radioman. In 1965, Meno married his girlfriend Hanna and in the course of the years they had two sons and a daughter, and his children were educated in the spirit of love of the people and the homeland and wanted to instill in them a strong love for Jerusalem and to connect them with the deep roots of the country. He loved the country very much, its vegetation and its sights. So he traveled a lot around the country and took his family with him, to look at its landscapes and sites and to define every rare plant he had encountered. More than anything else, he insisted on cleanliness of the place he was in, and this habit he wished to impart to his family and friends. He wanted to study chemistry at the university, but after he had treated the laboratory with dangerous material and was burned in his hands, he began to study under his wife’s pressure, checking accounts. He worked a day and studied at the Hebrew University branch in Tel Aviv, in the evening auditing department, with great effort but with exemplary diligence. He successfully completed the hard exams, and after being granted a license, he established a large, multi-client office. It had simplicity; He was far from elegance, boasting and arrogance, and his entire appearance was modest. He had a sense of humor and knew how to capture everything in stories and memories. His political views were extreme. Before the outbreak of the war he began his political and social activities. He set up a think tank in Gedera, which aimed to renew the local council there, so that changes would be introduced, especially in the field of education and culture. During the Yom Kippur War, Mano took part in the battles against the Syrians in the Golan Heights. On October 10, 1973, Emanuel was critically injured in the shelling of the Syrians near the El-Al junction. He died of his wounds the next day, on the 11th of Tishrei 5734 (October 11, 1973) and was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Rehovot. He left behind a wife, two sons and a daughter, a father, a mother and two sisters. After his fall, he was promoted to sergeant.