Author Archives: herbert j. cohen

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, dating for marriage was a very straightforward process. You met, dated for several months, and then came the moment of truth. Do you propose marriage or move on to dating someone else?

Nowadays, the dating landscape is different, especially in very religious Orthodox Jewish circles. I have granddaughters who live in Orthodox communities in America; they tell me that they have to prepare resumes that are submitted to matchmakers, who then work on their behalf to find suitable matches. I do not know if the system works, but it is very different from my own experience many years ago.

Although good character is still the key factor in determining the suitability of a match, finances also play a role. Will the prospective parents of the groom and bride be able to support the couple for a few years while the boy continues his Torah studies before entering the work force and will the parents help with buying a home as the couple morphs into a family with children?

Arranged marriage figures prominently in Belle, the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay, born in 1761, who was the natural daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Captain John Lindsay, a British Royal Navy officer. When Belle’s mother dies, Captain Lindsay takes her to England in 1765 to live with his uncle William Murray, the first Earl of Mansfield and the Lord Chief Justice of England. Lord and Lady Mansfield raise Belle as a free gentlewoman.

As a mixed-race child in a white household, her marriage prospects are dim. That changes when Belle’s father dies and leaves her an inheritance of 2000 pounds a year. Suitors do not run to her door, but marriage now becomes possible. In truth, Belle is no fool and is not interested in marriage for its own sake. She understands that she has the money to remain independent. But a vicar’s son and apprentice to the profession of law, John Davinier, captures her attention with his sincerity and devotion to worthy causes.

Tension arises between Lord Mansfield and Davinier when Davinier pressures him to make a controversial ruling that would make moral sense but would put the nation at great economic risk. Belle becomes aware of the rift and works behind the scenes to help Davinier. She does this is spite of being torn between affection for Davinier and loyalty to her guardian Lord Mansfield. The story, a gripping footnote to black history in England, is the background for Belle’s efforts to marry for love rather than for financial convenience.

Judaism has much to say about arranged marriages. To be a matchmaker is a good thing, and parents were the primary matchmakers throughout much of Jewish history. To find the right marriage partner is God’s work, but parents were God’s surrogates in the quest for a suitable marriage mate.

The patriarchs of the Jewish people took a major role in finding the appropriate wife for their child. The Bible recounts in detail how Abraham appointed his trusted servant Eliezer with finding a spouse for Isaac. The focus was on the potential mate’s spiritual qualities and good character. Being wealthy was not one of the criteria they sought.

Belle provides a fascinating look at the marriage market in the eighteenth century. Considerations of wealth and political position were uppermost in the minds of parents looking to move up socially through the marriage of a daughter to a person of rank. However, sensitive parents were not immune to the entreaties of children who wanted to marry people of good character rather than people of prestige and economic power. Belle and Lord Murray ultimately see eye to eye on this most important of matters.

Purchase this movie from Amazon.com.

I was born in Mt. Vernon, New York, a small bedroom community bordering the Bronx and only 25 minutes by train to Grand Central Station. To me Mt. Vernon was home. My family lived there as did many of my aunts, uncles, and cousins.

The next major move in my life came when I was married. My wife and I moved to New York City where we lived in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan near Yeshiva University. New York City was now my home. A number of years later we moved to Atlanta where I had accepted a job as a synagogue rabbi and later as a school principal. I stayed there for 27 years and felt that Atlanta was now my home.

How does one define a home? Is it simply a specific location or is home a place where your loved ones are? Brooklyn, the emotional odyssey of Ellis Lacey, a young woman who travels to America from Ireland in the 1950s to chart a new direction in her life, considers this question.

The film opens as Ellis prepares for her journey. The family is on the brink of poverty and Rose, Ellis’s sister, has contacted a priest in the United States who will sponsor Ellis as a new immigrant. As she leaves on a ship, her sister and mother tearfully bid her farewell.

On arriving to America after an arduous sea voyage, she takes up residence in a girls’ boarding house in Brooklyn and finds a job in a department store. These early days of her American experience are filled with homesickness and anxiety, but she eventually finds her stride and even enrolls in a bookkeeping class in night school at Brooklyn College.

At a dance in the neighborhood, Ellis meets Tony, an Italian-American, who is infatuated with Irish girls. Their relationship blossoms over time as they share their dreams with one another. She wants to become a bookkeeper and eventually an accountant; he is a plumber who wants to develop a thriving business.

Tony asks Ellis to marry him. Then tragedy strikes when she receives the news that her sister Rose has died, leaving no one to care for their mother. Ellis feels she must go home to be with her mother even for a short time. It is here that a dilemma develops. Does Ellis remain in Ireland, her family home, and build a life there or does she return to America and forge her destiny there with Tony?

Real estate agents utter the mantra of “location, location, location.” They refer to being in the right neighborhood, but in a metaphysical sense the phrase resonates in Judaism. The Ethics of the Fathers states that a person should live in place that is a place of Torah, a place where a person can grow spiritually. That is the key determinant of where one should live. If being in one’s parental hometown does not allow one to grow spiritually, then one should relocate. A home is not just where you live; it is a place where you grow.

Judaism has many recommendations about where to live and all of them relate to intellectual and spiritual growth, not to material surroundings or comfort alone. It is important to live with good neighbors in a moral environment, to place a mezuzah on the door to protect those who live there, to bring books of Jewish learning into the home, and to place a charity box in a prominent location in the home. All the above testifies to living in a home where one can grow emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.

In Brooklyn Ellis is compelled to decide whether a familiar, comforting environment trumps the new opportunity for love, connection, and growth. Her decision makes us evaluate our own ideal of what home should be.

Purchase this movie from Amazon.com.

A friend of mine in his seventies was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s several years ago. At first it was indicated by minor forgetfulness; but over time, the symptoms became more severe. His wife confessed to me after a couple of years that her husband was no longer the person he once was. He barely recognized her or the rest of his family. Indeed it was a sad and disturbing reality that the family confronted.

This mental decline is the subject of Still Alice, the unsettling narrative of Alice Howland, a top-flight professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, who discovers she has early onset Alzheimer’s when she is 50 years old.

At first we observe her forgetting little things, sometimes losing her train of thought while speaking. Later she loses her sense of direction and gets lost after an afternoon run. When she goes to a neurologist for help with her memory problems, the doctor, after giving Alice a number of tests, concludes that she has early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Although she is loved by her husband and children, both have difficulty dealing with the reality of a wife and mother whose memory is deteriorating each day. There is no cure. The crisis in the family brings some of its members closer together, but it is a strain. At the end of the day, they must accept a difficult and painful reality.

Although Still Alice is about how one woman deals with a terrible disease that takes away memory, the film indirectly informs us how important memories are. Near the beginning of her mental decline, Alice gives a powerful speech to an Alzheimer’s support group, which captures the dissonance between who she is now with who she once was: “All my life I’ve accumulated memories – they’ve become, in a way, my most precious possessions. The night I met my husband, the first time I held my textbook in my hands. Having children, making friends, traveling the world. Everything I accumulated in life, everything I’ve worked so hard for – now all that is being ripped away. But it gets worse. Who can take us seriously when we are so far from who we once were? Our strange behavior and fumbled sentences change other’s perception of us and our perception of ourselves. We become ridiculous, incapable, comic. My greatest wish is that my children, our children – the next generation – do not have to face what I am facing. But for the time being, I’m still alive. I know I’m alive. I have people I love dearly. I still have moments in the day of pure happiness and joy. And please do not think that I am suffering. I am not suffering. I am struggling. Struggling to be part of things, to stay connected to whom I was once.”

In the English class I teach, we recently discussed how biographies are different from autobiographies. The key difference is that the author of the autobiography relies heavily on memory to write his life’s story. I shared with my students the background behind my first book, The One of Us, which recounted my year in Israel as a student over thirty years ago. I was able to write about it only because I saved all the letters (aerograms, in those days) that I wrote and that my mother sent me, and they jogged my memory about events that took place during that year. Memory allowed me to re-experience the past and make it meaningful in the present.

Judaism values memory. Each year Jews experience a cycle of holy days that remind us to focus on past memories in order to appreciate and understand the present, and to navigate the future. Remembering the past is what makes us who we are today. Without memory, we are adrift spiritually and socially. Memory connects us to our history and to each other. Shared memories are an expression of our human connections which transcend time and space. Still Alice reminds us to treasure our memories and the human connections that matter along our life’s journey.

Purchase this movie from Amazon.com.