Photos by Drasnin-Reuben Photography

metro »

Aviva Cohen, widow of Rabbi Eliezer Cohen, center in pink,
surrounded by her family

Members and friends of Congregation Or Chadash parade their new Torah home to the Chabad elementary school in
Oak Park, where the congregation meets.

In Loving Memory

Rabbi Eliezer Cohen’s family commissions Or Chadash’s first new Torah.

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

T

Rabbi Eliezer Cohen

Rabbi Azaryah Cohen holds the
Torah commissioned in memory
of his father, Rabbi Eliezer
Cohen, by his family.

Co-rabbis of Or Chadash:
Azaryah Cohen and Eli Finkelman

12 October 27 • 2016

here was a chuppah, klezmer-style
music and dancing, but this was no
wedding.
More than 200 well-wishers gathered Sept.
25 for the dedication of a new Torah for
Congregation Or Chadash in memory of its late
rabbi, Eliezer Cohen.
They met on the lawn of Cohen’s Oak Park
home, where his wife, Aviva, still lives, watched
as his oldest son inked the final letter — a
“lamed” — onto the scroll, and then danced
the Torah, under the chuppah, three blocks
to the Chabad elementary school on Coolidge
Highway where the congregation meets.
It was a bittersweet moment for Aviva Cohen
and her 11 children, all of whom attended,
some traveling from Cleveland, Baltimore and
Savannah, Ga.
They were thrilled to commission the writ-
ing of a Torah, but saddened to recall Eliezer
Cohen’s unexpected death three years ago at
age 67.
“I’m overwhelmed with emotion,” said Rabbi
Azaryah Moshe Cohen, who now shares the Or
Chadash pulpit with Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman,
and also is head of school at Frankel Jewish
Academy in West Bloomfield.
“He was a teacher and he dedicated his life to
teaching Jewish children. It’s very fitting to have
a Torah dedicated in his memory to continue
the tradition.”
In creating a new Torah scroll, he said, the
family and the congregation are recommitting
to the covenant the Jewish people entered into
at Mount Sinai.
Eliezer Cohen was the rabbi at Young Israel
of Oak-Woods before it merged with Young
Israel of Greenfield in 1996. He and several
of his congregants then started Or Chadash,
which first met in members’ homes. At the end
of 2005, they moved to the Coolidge site.
The congregation has about 20 core families,

though its High Holiday services attract more
than 100. There are no dues and no paid staff;
the rent and other expenses are covered by
donations. Except for the High Holidays, ser-
vices are led by members.
Or Chadash has always involved women
more than most Orthodox congregations.
Women sit separately, but on the side, not
behind the men as in some shuls. They partici-
pate in services by opening the Ark, reading
prayers, or explaining the Torah or Haftarah
readings. Women have also served as president.
Cohen taught at Akiva (now Farber) Hebrew
Day School for almost 40 years, introducing
generations of middle school students to Torah
study.
One was Dovid Mandelbaum, formerly of
Oak Park who now works as a scribe in Betar,
Israel. The Cohen family commissioned him to
write the Torah, which he did with the help of
Rabbi Moshe Hacker, also of Betar. The project
took about a year.
Mandelbaum personally brought the Torah
from Israel to Oak Park.
This is the first Torah that is Or Chadash’s
own. At first, the congregation borrowed
Torahs from other synagogues. They received
four scrolls from a Baltimore congregation
that closed, but they were not in good repair.
Recently, the congregation has been using a
scroll borrowed from Hillel of Metro Detroit.

DEEP CONNECTIONS
The new Torah has an impressive silver crown,
also the congregation’s first, on loan from the
children of longtime congregants Benno and
Ruth Levi of Oak Park.
Their son Gabe Levi of New York said the
crown is a fitting tribute to his late parents
and to Rabbi Cohen. His parents felt very con-
nected to the rabbi, especially his father. “Rabbi
Cohen really spoke to him, really touched him

on a very deep level,” he said.
Many of those at the dedication had been
Rabbi Cohen’s students at Akiva, where he was
known as a fair but demanding teacher.
“My daughter was terrified when she learned
he would be her teacher, but all my kids adored
him,” said Sharon Krasner, a teacher from Oak
Park. “The things he taught them they were
able to use later, in their secular studies as well
as Jewish studies.”
Dr. Charles Silow of Huntington Woods,
one of Or Chadash’s founding members, said,
“Rabbi Cohen brought a freshness to Judaism.
He wanted people to learn and understand. He
encouraged people to participate.”
Congregation President Elliot Shevin of
Oak Park said, “Few could match the depth
and breadth of his recall, his logic, his grasp of
Jewish history and his ability to keep in mind
the fundamentals of what Judaism is about.
“He respected contrary opinions. He
demanded his students and constituents use
their own minds rather than defer blindly to
him. He was the first to show me my opinions
on politics and science aren’t incompatible with
Torah Judaism. This is why I stayed with him
and why I miss him.”
Finkelman said he always regarded Cohen
as his teacher, even though they met as class-
mates at Yeshiva University. Finkelman said he
admired Cohen’s “fierce” honesty.
“He wanted students to learn to think in
order to experience the job of thinking clearly.
If they learned to figure out difficult problems
with absolutely honesty, they could keep learn-
ing, because they could keep applying their
minds to difficult problems,” he said.
Finkelman said Cohen could be “deliberately
provocative” for the pleasure of getting others
to argue with him. “Better to get people to take
sides passionately than to be indifferent or doc-
ile,” he said.

*