My friend Elyakeem z’l

by Hanoch Ne’eman

We lost our friend Elyakeem Kinstlinger on the eleventh of Adar Alef 5784. Always when someone leaves this world we have regrets – like that I only learned how to correctly spell his last name now. But Hashem was kind to me in that although we had not met in person for many months, I had occasion to contact Elyakeem and thus it worked out that I got to speak to him on the phone nine days before his passing.

I first met Elyakeem when I was in tenth grade and he in ninth, and we were in gym class together. But I only stayed at that school for one year, so the next time I met Elyakeem was about thirty years later on a Jerusalem evening street. Somehow we seemed familiar to each other, and after a short time, Elyakeem placed it first. We became friends.

Elyakeem was very helpful in organizing Shabbos meals when I wanted to host. He liked being in or near the Old City, though his accomodations were often sporadic. This may have been partly due to his work, which took him to different countries, but I think it also spurred from the fact that the heart, in general, does not like routine, and Elyakeem sought the heart.

I could also identify with Elyakeem’s slowness/failure to get married. I married first at age 34, divorced three years later, and then waited fourteen years before marrying again, all the time thinking, “I will get married soon”. It’s not easy, we have so many trepidations which hold us back. I hope one of the lessons all of Elyakeem’s single friends take from his loss is – make it happen today.

I encouraged him, as I do all my single male Jewish friends, to wear a tallis. Once when we were in the Old City before a trip he was going on, he said let’s go into this book store and look at tallaysim. He bought a white tallis, and several days later he sent me a photo of him in tallis and tephillin in Bangkok airport.

During COVID, Elyakeem invited me to come to outdoor Shabbos meals he helped with in the Cardo. It sounded too cold to me, so I declined. Later it turned out that my next wife was among those who went. So perhaps if I had listened to Elyakeem, I would have married her sooner. I also never took up his invitation to join him and Chaim David playing guitar at the French Hospital on Yom shishi.

In our last conversation, Elyakeem shared with me his thought that tephillin help one tap into the cosmic pattern of giving. In Elyakeem’s merit, may Heaven help us to tap into the abilities to both give and receive.