The List

לָמָּה לָנֶצַח תִּשְׁכָּחֵנוּ תַּעַזְבֵנוּ לְאֹרֶךְ יָמִים

Fyodor Dostoevsky, “A Writer's Diary”, 1873: “It is said that people standing on an altitude are drawn, as it were, of their own accord downward into the abyss. I believe that many suicides and murders have been committed for the sole reason that the pistol had already been taken in hand. This is also an abyss—a forty-five degree slope on which one has got to slip down, and one is irresistibly impelled to pull the trigger.”

The List

This following list was composed by a man who grew up in Crown Heights. Levi Keller contributed names to this list before he passed on. While Levy Keller was dying, they were comparing notes. I have the fear that there might be a name in error. I already found one (maybe). The list is obviously incomplete. There are probably more OD, the current deadly plague. It’s just from a memory of two guys from Crown Heights, one of them is already dead himself.

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Naftali Barber - 24 Feb 1992

Dovke Marossow, The Patron Saint of the Holy Jumpers - mid 90s

Gourarie Montreal, man - mid 90s

Bell, 19, woman Montreal - 2000s

Dvora Leah Bruck, 20 - 24 Jul 2003

Moshe Hammer, 26 - 7/14/04

Benny Keller - June, 18? 2006,

Chani Kolodny, 17 - September 2006, Tishrei 12

Yisroel Noach Tsfasman, 24 - August 28, 2007

Gershy Gordetsky, Holy Train Jumper, 34 - 9/6/07

Rivka Dvora Kleim, 28 - 8/7/08

Kozliner, man - 2010s

Kasriel (Kazi) Benjamin, 25 - 9/20/11

Elli Ottenstein, 17 - 09/04/2011 - 4 Elul 5771

Yaacov Shlomo Pellin, 31 - 8/3/12

Yossi Alexander, 19 - 11/30/12

Aaron Meir Trappler, OD, 28 - 12/27/13

Zalmy Trappler, OD - 10/2014

Dave Gordon, 21 - 08/2014

Levi Moskowitz - 01/2015

Dovid Ciment, 26 - 11/20/2017

Rivka Levy, 25 - 12/27/2018

Moshe Deistch, 26 - 02/08/2019

Levi Heintz, OD, 24 - August, 2020

Yocheved Gourarie, 24 - December, 2020

Devorah Amishai, 31 - May, 13, 2021

Mendy Bennett, OD, 29 - May 10, 2023

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Everyone here deserves a separate post, instead, except for Yocheved Gourarie, the bodies are shoved under the carpet. Quickly, quickly, out of sight.

I am sure we are missing many names, but in general, the number of people (that we know) in thirty years is very low. In the old menatlblog there was the picture of a building in Warsaw that Jews used to jump from. It was a steady problem. Surprised, it doesn’t happen more often because this life makes little sense. Relationships between people make even less sense. Precious moments are fleeting, and you don’t realize how precious the moment is until it already passed…

Shakespeare, Macbeth:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Some names check out on collive. The website dedicated to death and intrusive obituaries. The only useful information in these obituaries is the cause of death. And except for the suspension of the rules during Covid, it’s always a top secret. In fact, the entire website is death notices and funerals with advertisements by the Jacobson brothers, S. Taub and Putin’s Rabbi, sprinkled in between. Who have ever imagined that a movement calling itself חב"ד will publish a rag that is 100% visual, pictures? עד מתי

In fact, they did learn one propaganda technic from Ramash. Pick a slogan and repeat it a million times until blue. Gather around kids, they used to do it in Russia. But Ramash couldn’t have learned it in Russia, it must have been from his subsequent host.

Ad nauseam: “This uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach is more effective alongside the propagandist limiting or controlling the media.”

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Addendum

I am going to add to this list three names. There are three entirely different people who have only one thing in common. Wait, they have two things in common…

Lazer Levy, 90s?

Such a magical photo! Lazer Levy, son of Berel Levy, the founder of the OK, and a frequent traveler to Russia. Lazer on a trip to Russia with his father. Lazer Levy was a Shaliyach in RI when he passed on.

Now that I think back to it. I knew most of the people in those Russian photos, but when I used to meet Berel Levy in the Rosenfeld Shule in Borough Park, he never asked me questions or showed a simple human interest. Maybe he was like that with Lazer?

Come to think it, Berel Levy was a perfect Ramash emissary (and a perfect Ramash chosid for that matter). American businessman from Torah Vodaas, knew nothing of Russia or Chabad 1.0. Understood that being part of Chabad is good for business, and so were his missions to Russia. It was some sort of kosher ingredients that he supervised on his trips there. Get the potatoes in Moscow, tomatoes in Leningrad, show fresh pictures of the produce to the Rebbe.

Lazer was quiet as his father was loud. But let me tell you that being a Shaliyach in Rhode Island is enough to kill you. The only thing worse is the neighboring Massachusetts. The mediocrity, the year around grayness, the grayness of the soul, the cultural puritan coldness, the memories of the state that once was, the memories of the religion that once was, the all-around dying energy. Humans used to live here! Just ask the Rebbe, Zalman Schachter…

I heard that Lazer went into his closed garage and ran the engine, maybe he fell asleep.

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Anton Rozenberg, 2000

Anton Rozenberg, 1977, Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas, 12X19”, Family Collection.

I met Anton in Moscow and then I left. I remember seeing this portrait in his apartment in Moscow in 1980? In 1977, when he painted the portrait, he was 15. By the time Anton came to America and settled in Crown Heights, I was leaving NY. I now skimmed through the book that his mother published after his death. I feel very ambivalent about Anton and his art, but now it doesn't matter.

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Bruce Lokeinsky 11/17/2021

I was likely the last person to speak to Bruce. I got to know Bruce through the first mentalblog. During Covid, we reconnected and sometimes spoke several times a week. Unlike many American BTs, Bruce was very culturally Jewish.

When I spoke to Bruce that Friday before, his telephone went dead and I kept frantically calling him. He told me of his friend who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and went up in the fire of the Twin Towers. Bruce said he advised him to take that job. Then he laughed about his friend's grandmother, who came to America from a Hungarian Jewish village and, upon seeing a black man, for the first time in her life, fainted…

That weekend, Bruce rented a hotel room and never came out. I often wonder how exactly did he go? Bruce knew every under layer of knowledge, I am sure it was something very sophisticated and smart. Why a hotel? In the apartment, he might have been there for weeks or more before anyone noticed him missing. Bruce thought of everything!

P.S. I had a big write-up here about Bruce, I even showed it to his kids to get an approval, but in the end this is not the place and to be honest, no one cares.

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It’s ok to go young. Because being old is an ugly problem. We don’t speak about it, but it doesn’t mean that the issue has gone away. There is a dementia epidemic. I, personally, think that this dementia epidemic caused by all the drugs that are prescribed. All you can pray is that the old person remains self-sufficient, can go to the toilet alone.

I can’t tell you how many people I know that have parents in a nursing home. Horror, someone who is a proud owner of his space is suddenly in an institution sharing a room with someone decrepit. These people have moments of clarity when they realize the horror of their fate and condition. The amount of grief is comparable to all the Gulags, but no one speaks about it because it’s a taboo. Or too painful to even think about.