Photo courtesy of Jonathan Cohen

By Steve Sears

Jonathan Cohen, 32, who grew up in Livingston, is always looking to find ways to better himself. 

“I’m a military man,” says Cohen, who now lives in New York City. “I spent two years in the Israeli Defense Forces, 20 months as an infantry combat soldier, and I’m always on the lookout for ways to push myself. I came across his content and read his book, and it really was just something that resonated with me.”

The book was Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, and the author was marathoner and ultramarathoner, David Goggins, who also created the David Goggins 4X4X48 Challenge. Cohen, who had lost both of his grandmothers to Alzheimer’s Disease, this year took part in the challenge, where participants run four miles every four hours for 48 hours. He dedicated it to his late grandmother, Ziva Cohen. 

“When my first grandmother passed away from this, it was one of the most surreal moments,” Cohen recalls. “I had the opportunity to say goodbye to her, but seeing someone who has taken care of you for your whole life just suddenly being in a state of not recognizing you. I have this vivid image in my mind of her reaching out to me and still smiling, but so clearly not knowing who I was. And that really just hit home in a way. And then when my second grandmother passed away from it, I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye because she was in Israel, and I wanted to do something to memorialize her impact, and both of their impacts on me, and that was about resilience.”

Ziva passed away on her grandson’s birthday, February 9. “It had been going great,” Cohen says of his 32nd birthday. “My parents were on their way to come celebrate with me and my family, and then on the way in, my dad called me to let me know that my grandmother had passed. The whole energy just shifted. I just sat down and started going through photos of me and her.”

Cohen is no stranger to challenges. He had participated in the virtual TCS 26.2 New York City Marathon in 2020, and earlier that year had done another fundraiser on his social media feed for Feeding America, where he fed 20,000 families by doing 1,018 push-ups in an hour. “I did 18 push-ups every minute on the minute for 60 minutes, and I posted it to my Instagram page. Initially, the goal was just to feed 10,000 people. But in the end, we ended up doubling that. That was also another special opportunity.”

Cohen started his Goggins Challenge on Friday morning, February 25, at 8 a.m. and his final run was on Sunday, February 27, at 4 a.m. “I wanted to prove that we can go beyond the limits that we set for ourselves,” he states. He finished by 8 a.m. that morning with his brother running along side of him. “I did the challenge on my own, but I wanted to incorporate my brother for the final two miles.”

Funding support for Cohen’s Goggins Challenge on his GoFundMe page was well above his initial goal of $1,200. “I’m grateful for the way this resonated with people,” Cohen says, “and I reached out to every single donor personally. If I couldn’t reach out to them personally, I wrote a thank you on the page. To see the outpouring of support from the community, from people I know and people I don’t know, I’ve never experienced anything like that. This is really just an opportunity to remind myself what I’m capable of, but also to give back at the same time. It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.”

Cohen can be followed on Instagram @JonathanZCohen, and he hosts a podcast called “Inside The Inspired” (streaming wherever podcasts can be accessed).