Once Yankel Cohen started to learn, he became a bochur obsessed, falling under the Torah’s magic spell. Yet Reb Yankel didn’t travel alone on this lifelong adventure — he took us all along for the ride

Photos: Naftolli Goldgrab, Family archives

When he first came to Telshe yeshivah in 1951, he’d sneak out to the baseball stadium, but once Yankel Cohen started to learn, he became a bochur obsessed, falling under the Torah’s magic spell. Yet Reb Yankel didn’t travel alone on this lifelong adventure – he took us all along for the ride, and for the next 70 years, let us know that the treasure belonged to all of us

“Dovid Hamelech, alav hashalom, said, ‘Lulei Sorascha sha’ashuai az avaditi b’anyi.’ And I too, announce in a loud voice, the words of hakaras hatov filling my heart toward Hakadosh Baruch Hu that He gave us His holy Torah, in which I found what my neshamah has loved, from my youth until this day.”

(From the introduction to the sefer Sha’ashuei Yaakov, by Rav Yisroel Yaakov Cohen, 2020.)

Devorim! Nifloim! Ad! Meod!

Bursting forth from random corners of the beis medrash, the words emerged from the man in the graying beard and the short-sleeved shirt, his vintage glasses perched upright on his nose. In those corners he built towering edifices, tore them down, and rebuilt them again. And we watched from the sidelines as he waged wars, climbed mountains, and swam the deepest seas. For 70 years, Rav Yankel Cohen ztz”l was the ultimate adventurer, engaged in the definitive adventure.

Torah Hakedoshah. And every beautiful secret it offers to those who plumb its depths.

If only my pen could reproduce that singular voice packed with 100 tons of gravel and the purity, love, and joy of the music it created. The soundtrack of my youth. Four simple words, repeated thousands of times by the man who loved the devar Hashem as life itself — who understood that it is life itself.

“I wish to express hakaras hatov… to my father and mother who sent me to the holy yeshivah in Telz, and to my rebbi, Rav Yaakov Nayman ztz”l, who guided and encouraged my parents in sending me…”

His story was an unlikely one. Born in late 1930s Chicago to an American-born father, Reb Yankel’s path to greatness was not a bet anyone was taking. Brilliant, popular, handsome, he was an all-American story waiting to happen.

Yisroel Yaakov Cohen was known as Jerry back then, and the star of every court and field he could find. The non-Jewish kids in the neighborhood would wait anxiously for his return from school. Without him, the games weren’t worth contesting. When he wasn’t playing, he was watching the Cubs in the bleachers at Wrigley, hanging onto every pitch and every big game.

And then, in 1951, his father decided 13-year-old Yankel was going to yeshivah. Not just any yeshivah, but to Telshe. The Telshe of Rav Elya Meir Bloch and Rav Mottel Katz. The citadel that, in time, would rewrite Torah history in the American Midwest and spread its light across the globe.

But Jerry was having none of it. There was no way he was going to a high school that didn’t even have a baseball team. All summer they argued, and when the family rav, Rav Yaakov Nayman, a talmid of the Brisker Rav, entered the discussion, Jerry finally relented, begrudgingly giving them two weeks with a promise that his dad would come get him if it wasn’t his place.

It wasn’t. Not yet.

Louis Cohen, the traveling salesman who wanted nothing more than his son to become a ben Torah, came to collect him, as promised. As Jerry packed his bags, he looked up and saw his father sobbing by the doorway. His soft heart melted. He would stick it out.

But he didn’t change overnight. Jerry still loved baseball.

He used to sneak down the famous Telshe hill to Euclid Avenue and catch a bus to Cleveland Municipal Stadium, or as we knew it as kids, the “Mistake by the Lake.” One day his absence was noticed and members of the hanhalah came to the rosh yeshivah to discuss their response. The answer came swiftly:

“Mach a shveig — Just keep it quiet.”