The following is an article from the Skokie Review:

A day after Skokie resident Moshe Menora died alongside three grandchildren in a plane he was flying, the Jewish Orthodox community remembered him as a loving, passionate and charitable member of their tight community.

“There isn’t anybody who didn’t know him or his family,” said Rabbi Yosef Posner of Lubavitch Chabad of Skokie. “There wasn’t a home where the Menora family wasn’t known. This touches everybody.”

Congregation Or Torah in Skokie, where the 73-year-old Menora was a beloved member, overflowed with friends and family Wednesday during a heart-wrenching funeral. In addition to Menora, the funeral was also for granddaughters Sara Klein, 17, Rebecca (Rikki) Celia Menora, 16, and Rachel Menora, 14, all Israeli citizens.

Moshe Menora’s 13-year-old grandson, Yossi, also aboard the ill-fated plane, survived the tragic crash and is recovering from serious burns at a downstate Michigan hospital.

These four grandchildren – three children of Moshe’s son and one his daughter’s child — had been visiting from Israel for about a week. Moshe was flying them back from Mackinac Island in Michigan after a short visit there when the fatal accident occurred.

An open telephone line brought the sounds of Wednesday night’s funeral to friends and family in Israel where the teenagers and their families lived. Interment was scheduled to take place at Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem this week.

Mourners of all ages filed past a throng of broadcast media trucks and lights into Or Torah for the funeral. Many were still numb from the news.

“It’s devastating to our community because they were pillars,” said Bobbe Freeman who has known Moshe’s wife, Sema, and her twin sister, Hannah, for 65 years.

Freeman said the community moves on because it has no other choice. “We’ve known so much tragedy, our people,” she said. “There’s really only one thing we can do, and that is to move on.”

One of Moshe’s closest friends, a Lincolnwood resident named Abe who did not want to give his last name, said he has known Moshe for 50 years. “I don’t think there were many people in Chicago who knew him as well I as I did,” he said. “He was a person with a lot of humility. He was a very humble person. He was a generous person. Everything he did was in a quiet way. He didn’t look for lots of praise for all the generous things he did. He was just quiet about it.”

But as friends and family looked back at Moshe’s life with a heavy heart Wednesday, it was hard for them not to do just what he tried to avoid in his life: Shine a light on all of his accomplishments.

One mourner after another talked about Moshe’s generosity, his philanthropy, his deep work ethic and his unbridled passion for his religion and the synagogues to which he belonged. He was successful in real estate, the owner of Tri-United in Skokie, after working hard to develop his business.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Moshe moved first to Chicago and then Skokie, an active member of Congregation Bnei Ruven before joining Congregation Or Torah.

“He was a very special person,” said Congregation Bnei Ruven Rabbi Baruch Hertz. “He was a self-made man, very determined, very active in the synagogue. He was always involved in projects and a part of so many of our successful events.”

When Hertz first came to the Chicago synagogue, he remembers Moshe as being completely supportive and a well-liked member of the congregation. Moshe held a Torah scroll at his house that proceeded to the synagogue, the rabbi remembered.

He offered the rabbi the use of his wife’s car when Hertz first came to town. He helped usher in the computer age at the synagogue, pushing synagogue leaders to become more computer-savvy, Hertz recalled.

Hertz also remembered Moshe’s son, Sholom, who lost two children and a father Tuesday.

“He was always doing social work, always engaged in some kind of community work,” Hertz said. “He learned that from his father.”

Rabbi Zvi Engel of Congregation Or Torah led Wednesday’s funeral. Many family members who gave eulogies were overcome by emotion, other family members in the congregation sobbing loudly. More seats had to be placed in the large room, which was so crowded that mourners lined the walls and filled the doorway.

“I thought he would be here forever,” eulogized one family member. “Where do I begin? How can I begin to understand? His loss is too profound to describe.”

Son-in-law Gary Schreiber said he remains “dumbfounded” by the shock of this tragedy. “But with broken hearts, we accept this divine decree,” he said.

Schreiber said Moshe was always insightful and able to penetrate to the crux of a problem. “I knew him as a friend and a confidant, as someone with a strong will who refused to take no for an answer.”

A member of the Israeli army, Moshe was always “self-sufficient” with an inner strength that few others had, his son-in-law said. “He was determined to succeed in every endeavor.”

Schreiber remembers Moshe’s recent visits to their home in Connecticut where he would play with their children, delighting them, tickling them, making them smile and laugh.

“You made every effort to visit us and enrich our lives with your sound advice and encouragement,” he said, his voice breaking. “We thoroughly enjoyed spending the times we had together and we will cherish those moments forever.”

Moshe had a large family that included three children and 17 grandchildren. A daughter-in-law, Wednesday, eulogized that he treated her like a daughter. That was common; many said that Moshe’s large extended family meant everything to him.

Sholom said Wednesday that his father taught him everything he knows. Moshe was strong-willed, he said, just as he is, but they always worked out problems together.

Before Moshe left with his grandchildren for Michigan Tuesday, Sholom came to town to spend some time with his children. They had two final days together.

“I had been very busy lately and I told my girls that on Sunday and Monday, I was turning off my cell phone and we were just going to do things together,” he recounted.

They went to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, and the girls, he said, loved all that was there. The family took a picture together, the last picture they would ever take. Sholom then left to travel to Florida knowing his father was going to take them flying, an activity the kids always enjoyed.

“They loved it so much. And then I got a call in Florida later in the day…” Sholom said he will always remember Sunday and Monday as “perfect days” with his children.

Sholom said he received about 850 condolence e-mails on Wednesday, many of them saying he is now the new patriarch of the Menora family. But he respectfully disagrees.

“I’m not the new family head,” he told Wednesday’s large grieving congregation. “My father is the family head. My father trained me, taught me in everything I do. I’m just to be a continuation of what I learned.”

(Source: Skokie Review)