The College Archive · Opinions
Remembering Rabbi Jonathan ‘JoCo’ Cohen Z”l
Yeshiva University is mourning the untimely passing of Rabbi Jonathan Cohen, the university’s beloved, longtime assistant director of admissions in Israel. Generations of students knew him simply as “JoCo.” Rabbi Cohen passed away on June 16, 2026. The levaya was held the following morning in Beit Shemesh, his home. For more than 13 years, Rabbi Cohen served as a cornerstone of YU’s Israel admissions team, helping thousands of students find their way to YU. But to those who knew him, he was far more than an admissions officer. He was a mentor, a connector and, as one colleague put it, a legend.
Rabbi Cohen grew up in West Hempstead, N.Y. and attended HAFTR High School. He studied at Yeshivat Sha’alvim before attending Yeshiva University, where he earned a degree in accounting from the Sy Syms School of Business. After graduation, he returned to Israel as a madrich at Yeshivat Reishit Yerushalayim. He later made aliyah with his wife, Tzivia, and their children, returning to Yeshivat Sha’alvim, where he spent six years as a popular sho’el umaishiv. There, he joined the YU Israel Program staff as assistant director of admissions, a role he held for over a decade.
Colleagues who worked alongside Rabbi Cohen describe a man whose warmth was present in every interaction. Marc “Ziggy” Zharnest, a longtime colleague at YU, recalled that Rabbi Cohen “had a rare ability to connect instantly with someone and understand who they were from the moment he met them.”
Long before WhatsApp statuses were a societal norm, Rabbi Cohen had already turned his status into a tool for outreach. The WhatsApp groups he built, Zharnest said, “became centers of connection, information, encouragement and community,” used not only to draw students toward Yeshiva University but to spread Torah and connect them to something larger than themselves.
That instinct never left him. According to Zharnest, Rabbi Cohen was still creating WhatsApp groups and arranging opportunities for students to meet with roshei yeshiva in his final months. As recently as two weeks before his passing, while hospitalized, he was still texting about registration numbers and class enrollment. “That is not normal,” Zharnest said. “Most people in that situation would understandably be focused only on themselves. But Rabbi Cohen was still thinking about students, still thinking about YU, still thinking about the Jewish future.”
Rabbi Josh Frohlich, who worked alongside Rabbi Cohen on YU’s student development and admissions teams for more than 15 years, remembers him as “the king of Jewish geography.” However, Frohlich notes that it was never a game to Rabbi Cohen. “It was an outgrowth of his genuine care for people from the moment he met them,” Frohlich said.
“There are countless stories of students who only made it to YU because of his personal involvement,” he said, describing a man who treated every successful enrollment as a personal triumph. “Sometimes there would be an audible excitement coming from his office,” Frohlich recalled. “He’d say, ‘So-and-so is finally able to enroll.’ For him, there was just nothing more exciting than knowing that he just helped another Jew.”
His kindness also extended beyond the YU community: Shira Bornstein, who works in Yeshivat Har Etzion’s Overseas Office and coordinated Rabbi Cohen’s visits to the Yeshiva, remembers his habit of stopping by her office to say hello. “Every time he visited the Gush, he was makpid — he made certain — to step into our offices to say hello. That courtesy meant the world to me. By gifting me a few minutes of his time and showing recognition and appreciation for my role, he officially recruited me to be a huge ‘JoCo’ fan.”
On one occasion, arriving on a day she wasn’t there, he left YU merchandise on her desk to let her know he’d stopped by. “It was his signature way of letting me know he had stopped by and appreciated my assistance,” she said. “Rabbi Cohen was the ultimate connector … For Rabbi Cohen, ‘Chaverim kol Yisrael’ was more than a prayer; it was how he moved through life.”
Rabbi Cohen’s illness did not diminish the network of connections he had spent decades building, and if anything, it activated that network. As word of his condition spread, students, colleagues and friends across the YU world looked for tangible ways to be a zechut for his refuah shleima. A Tehillim chat was formed so that people could commit to saying Tehillim on his behalf, and a daily “JoCo status” update kept the wider community informed and praying together. Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz, Torah Dean of RIETS, launched a weekly shiur series called “Answering YUr Shailos,” offering in-depth halachic answers to questions from the public compiled by Rabbi Cohen himself. This initiative, started as a zechut for his refuah, continues as an aliyah for his neshama.
Perhaps most telling of all was how Rabbi Cohen himself responded when people asked what they could do to help him. According to those close to him, his answer was strikingly simple: Bring more warmth and positivity into the world through a smile.
Rabbi Cohen’s impact extended well beyond the students he helped admit to YU. “His legacy is not only in the programs he helped build or the thousands of students he guided,” Zharnest reflected. “His legacy is in the way he made people feel, the Torah he spread, the relationships he created and the communities he built.”
Zharnest described Rabbi Cohen as someone who “could look past labels, past what someone wore on their head, past the length of someone’s pants and past all the external things that too often divide people,” loving each individual and wanting the best for them wherever they stood in life. “We simply do not have enough people like him,” he said, “people who can truly see others, love them, and bring them closer to Torah, to community and to themselves.”
Yeshiva University, in announcing his passing on its social media, called Rabbi Cohen’s work “not just a profession, but a calling,” rooted in “a deep warmth and an unwavering commitment to each student’s personal journey.” That warmth touched students across YU’s Israel programs, colleagues across two continents and yeshivot throughout Israel — a network of relationships built one conversation, one WhatsApp message, one Shabbos greeting at a time.
On July 10, YU President Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman shared on X a message of condolences that President Donald Trump had sent on June 26 to the Yeshiva University community. In it, Trump called Rabbi Cohen “a man of deep faith, wisdom, and compassion whose life reflected an unwavering devotion to the Almighty, to his family and to the Jewish community.” As a “longtime admissions counselor,” Trump wrote, “he dedicated his life to supporting the next generation of Jewish leaders.” He closed by writing, “May the Almighty bless him, and may his memory be a blessing to the many lives he inspired.”
That same warmth emerged in his one-on-one interactions with students. Zachy Gross (YC ‘28) recounted how he first met Rabbi Cohen and saw the trajectory of Rabbi Cohen’s illness. Gross was a student in Sha’alvim, where Rabbi Cohen frequently visited. “He just loved talking to people and genuinely cared about every single person he met, which is why he was so good at his job. I remember complaining to him about a few small problems, and he slowly went through them with me and talked about how he was going to help me out.”
During Gross’ second year in yeshiva, Rabbi Cohen was diagnosed. “But despite that, there were still many chances to interact with him,” Gross said. This past winter break, Rabbi Cohen gave a sichas musar that Gross attended while visiting Israel. “It was just a platform for him to talk; nobody had any idea how it was going to go.” By the end of his sichah, Gross said, Rabbi Cohen had “inspired everyone. You could see he was somehow the happiest person in the room, even though he was the person with the shortest lifespan in the room and everyone knew that. He was probably the only person who could deal with the harsh reality.” Looking back, Gross said that what stayed with him most was Rabbi Cohen’s joy. “He was just so happy and joyful,” he said. “He just cared about people so much, every person, individually, to the same level.”
May his memory be a blessing, and may his singular gift for connection continue to inspire not only those who merited knowing him, but all who hear his story, to reach out and connect with the people around them.
Photo Caption: Rabbi Jonathan Cohen z”l
Photo Credit: YUNews