Let’s hear it for the humble, wonderful Mr Cohens - The Jewish Chronicle

During my time as a journalist, I have written, edited and read many obituaries. I gained an important perspective on this from a friend who told me, when I apologised for disturbing him during the shiva, “don’t apologise, this is the only thing I can do for my mother now.” With this in mind, I have tearfully written tributes to friends and teachers, but one of the obituaries I found the most moving was for someone I didn’t know, who was neither a great scholar, nor a generous philanthropist. Let’s call him Mr Cohen.

Mr Cohen was an ordinary observant Jew who lived what seemed to be an unremarkable life. Yet his obituary brought me to tears and has remained with me. His family wrote that he was honest in business and gave what he could to charity. He learned Torah regularly, ensured he went to shul punctually daily and spent as much time as he could with his family, treating his parents with respect, and cherishing his wife and children. In Yiddish, one would call him a mensch or an ehrliche Yid.

Earlier this month I attended two funerals in one afternoon, both for people who might have been expected to be insignificant but who, in fact, made a surprising difference to the world. One was Lily Ebert, about whom much has been written already. Small in stature but huge in character and determination, she made it her life’s mission to ensure that the Holocaust was not forgotten. How remarkable to move from being a slave labourer, living under the constant threat of death, to being the matriarch of a beautiful large family, and having the King send his representative to deliver a personal message at one’s funeral.

This idea was encapsulated at the other levoyah, where I heard a memorable quote from the Talmud. In his eulogy the rabbi cited a paragraph from Tractate Pesachim, in which Rav Yosef, the son of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, underwent what we would probably call a near-death experience.

After he had recovered his father asked him: “What did you see when you were about to die?” He replied: “I saw an upside-down world, in which high-up, important people were at the bottom of the pile, while lowly, insignificant people were on top.”

His father responded: “My son, you have seen a clear world.”

One of the early Chasidic rebbes was the somewhat enigmatic Reb Zusha of Anipoli. A scholar who left no written legacy, he wandered in exile with his brother, Reb Elimelech of Lizensk (the Noam Elimelech), inspiring repentance and role-modelling love of other people.

The story is told that on his deathbed, having undergone terrible suffering in his later years, Reb Zusha wept. His pupils asked him, “Why are you crying? You were almost as wise as Moses, and as kind as Abraham.”

Reb Zusha replied: “The Heavenly Tribunal won’t ask me, ‘Why weren’t you Moses? Why weren’t you Abraham?’ They will ask me, ‘Why weren’t you Zusha?’ I’m worried that I didn’t fulfil my potential to be Zusha.”

Very often, we forget about the Mr Cohens: regular people who do the best they can with their abilities and resources. Most of us cannot be scholars or philanthropists, nor do we have a remarkable life story to share. At the recent rally in Hyde Park to commemorate the anniversary of October 7, a large screen was dedicated to a slideshow of all the victims of the massacre, with their names, ages and a sentence about who they were. A recurring theme was their beautiful smile, their love for life, their families and new experiences. Who knows what amazing things they might have achieved?

If we’ve learned anything over the last difficult year it is that ordinary people have extraordinary potential – whether it’s organising rallies, prayer groups or fundraisers, or simply sending a meal or a gift to a family whose husband/father is serving in the army. Many communal organisations have been founded over the years in response to personal tragedy or the needs of a specific group of families, but we don’t need to wait for a tragedy to happen to show our love for others.

Instead, as we reach the end of the yom tov season, we can build on our introspection and resolutions, to become the best regular person we can be: decent, loving and generous, and perhaps in that way, we can build a brighter future.

Vicki Belovski is a writer and educator based in north-west London

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Lily Ebert