No one in the family was ever called Yosef, and my father continued to mourn

In 1928 when my father was ten years old, the unthinkable happened.

After the Shabbos meal following his beloved older brother Yosef’s bar mitzvah, Yosef went for a walk with friends on the West Side. During the walk, Yosef was tragically struck by a vehicle. He passed away instantly.

This haunted my father every day; he could not forget it. Meeting someone else named “Yosef” was always a brutal reminder of his brother Yosef’s tragic passing. My father was so drawn to the name that on a visit to Eretz Yisrael, he went to Yosef Hatzaddik’s kever in Shechem, a destination that was not in vogue at the time.

After my father married, he desperately wanted to name a child after his brother. However, the rabbanim that he consulted advised against it, claiming it would be bad mazel to name a child after someone whose life had been truncated so suddenly and cruelly. No one in the family was ever called Yosef, and my father continued to mourn.

Twenty-six years after the tragedy, for the first time since that heartbreaking day, my grandmother had a dream about her deceased son. It was a Friday night and Yosef came to her in the dream and said, “Mama, tonight is a simchah. Fill the cup and let it run over.” My grandmother woke up very shaken, as she was unaware of any simchah.

Right after Shabbos, my father called: “Mazel tov, it’s a boy!”

They realized the baby was born the same time my grandmother had her dream. When my grandmother shared the story of her dream, the rabbanim advised that my father name his new baby Yosef Chaim, which means “May He add life.”

Finally, more than a quarter of a century after that final goodbye to his brother Yosef, my father was comforted.

Dovid Nachman Golding is a partner of Suki & Ding Productions and a Mishpacha columnist.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 854)