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

[Grace Cangialosi]

I'm so sorry, Jay.

> On Dec 30, 2016, at 2:23 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.