[Magdalen] R.I.P. Michael-Yitzhak Kolberg

[Jay Weigel]

This morning I learned via a Facebook post from his son Yishai  that my
dear Israeli friend Yitzhak died this morning. I am still in shock. I
hadn't spoken with Yitzhak for a couple of weeks, which wasn't unusual, but
I was aware that he'd been pretty frail recently, also not an unusual
occurrence in the winter. A few moments ago I found on his page some posts
between Yishai and another mutual friend that explained what happened.
Apparently Yitzhak fell a couple of times last week and seemed confused, so
they took him to the hospital, He was found to have some kind of virus
(Yishai didn't say what but I suspect viral pneumonia for reasons which may
become clear in a moment). He was in ICU and the doctors tried their best
but it wasn't enough (Yishai's words). Yitzhak died this morning, Dec. 30.

Yitzhak was my first online friend. We met in a now-defunct gardening chat
on a long since gone network and struck up a conversation. On learning he
was in Israel, I was immediately fascinated and wanted to know all about
gardening there as well as many other things.We became fast friends,
nothing more than that, and conversations ranged far and wide. I considered
him sort of another brother, and he became friendly with my late ex also He
was an honorary godfather to our Isaak, having the same name, and sent him
a small baby gift which his mama still treasures, a "hamsa" crib charm that
is hung over a baby's crib or cradle in Yemenite Jewish homes and bears
five wishes for the child, which IIRC are health, wealth, happiness, a good
marriage, and long life. In 2003 he came to see us when he visited the US
and we all enjoyed his company. He was amazed at how green everything is in
Tennessee, and I told him, "You may live in the Promised Land, but this is
God's country and don't you forget it!"

He was a fascinating person. Born in Shanghai to Russian Jewish parents
(his mother's family had a business there since 1905; his dad escaped the
Russian revolution as a very young teenager by going east), he lived there
until the family picked up stakes and moved the business to Japan in 1951.
He was educated in Canadian schools there because his parents wanted him to
speak English. He left Japan at the age of 19 because the government threw
him out, basically, on account of his association with anti-Vietnam War
activities. As a stateless person, he didn't have a lot of options, but
being Jewish, one of those was Israel, so that's where he went. "A funny
 way to make aliyah," he said. He could read in four languages with 4
different alphabets (English, Hebrew, Russian, and Japanese) and speak
fluently in the first three but had forgotten a lot of his Japanese. He
loved his adopted country but detested Netanyahu; he was an old-line
socialist and revered Ben-Gurion, Golda, and even Yitzhak Rabin and
predicted that that country would "go to hell" after Rabin's assassination
(as it seems to be doing). He had no use for their religious right. He was
a strong believer in the kibbutz movement and had lived on a kibbutz since
his aliyah.. He loved dogs and always had at least one, besides which every
dog in Kibbutz Lahav who needed affection and attention came to him. He
read voraciously, mostly history and science fiction, was fascinated by the
American Civil War, and knew more about the Second Temple period than
anyone I ever met. He loved his three sons and his two granddaughters and
other people's small children, and in his later years after he and his
sons' mother were divorced (but discovered they could be quite good
friends) he became a foster grandfather in a home for troubled teenagers.

I'm going to miss him. A lot.