3rd of Shvat–yahrzeit of great-grandfather Rav Yona Cohn

 This coming Wednesday is the 89th yahrzeit of great-grandfather Rav Yona Cohn.

Rav Yona was born in Altona to Chacham Binyamin and his wife Miriam (Marianne), a talmid of the RabbinerSeminar in Berlin he wrote a dissertation on the לחם הפנים. Later he translated and wrote a German commentary on סדר קדשים. From both of these I assume that as a Cohen he felt especially responsible for learning הלכות that were relevant for כהנים. His brother Dayan Yaakov Cohn הי״ד זצ״ל, reported that a great influence on them was that as children they learned with their uncle Rav Yekev Cohn who was a talmid of Chasam Sofer and with Rav Munk who was a talmid of Rav Akiva Eiger. So they were really connected to the tradition of an earlier generation of גדולי התורה.

My mother recalled visiting when he was already elderly and frail and going with him to shul on Shabbos and being struck by how dertmined he was to walk the long way around and not to go on a shopping street, where many of the stores were owned by Jews and open on Shabbos. My friend and neighbor Reb Eli Kon who died a few months ago, was born and raised in Wroclaw (Breslau) in the Gerer shtiebel which is still standing–he told me that many of the Polish Jews who came from frum homes gave up on Shabbos when they had stores in Breslau.

Great-grandfather was originally rov in Wreschen, now Września in Poland, then it was close to the border with Russia/Poland and was a fairly large Jewish community (https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/15029-wreschen) The Malbim was the Rov there earlier and wrote his ארצות החיים while he was there. My grandmother Leah was born during the period in Wreschen.

Later he became the Rov in Rawicz (Rawitsch) and he wrote and published a history of the community which had been there since the early 1600s. Rabbi Avrohom Eiger, eldest son of Rav Akiva Eger who prepared his writings for publication, lived in Ravicz. Rav Yona would probably have stayed there, but after WW1 it became part of Poland, and Poland did not pay rabbonim official government salaries and also required learning the language. So he moved to became Dayan in Wroclaw/Breslau around 1920. As you can see from the illustrations below, he had official hours to receive the שאלות of the city, and was also responsible for supervising kashrus.

זכותו יגן בעד צאצאיו זכרונו לחיי עולם הבא