In this week’s sedra, Naso, God instructs Moses on the words that Aaron and his sons will use to bless the people (Numbers 6:24-26).
May God Bless you and keep you,
May God’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you,
May God’s face turn towards you and give you peace.
Aaron and his sons served as High Priests, hence the blessing become known as the Priestly Blessing and is still recited in every Shabbat service to this day. It’s a beautiful blessing that reminds us of the enduring special connection between God and the Jewish people. Many Jewish families use these same words to bless their children on Friday night. It is a special moment between child and parent.
I want to share a story with you of a child who growing up never received many blessings in her early life, but please don’t feel pity for her because she would hate that. But back then if the child had stopped to think about her life, she would probably not have expected to amount to much. And when you hear her story, you might agree because she had a very dodgy start in life. Born to unmarried Irish parents at a time when that was not acceptable, her parents escaped to England to have her and subsequently put her into foster care at the age of 3 months.
The child grew up in what she later realised was a stable foster home but with little love and affection and very poor status. She lived in Stockwell in South London, on the ground floor of a small, terraced house. There was only an outside toilet, the bath was a tin tub once a week in front of the open fire in the tiny, drab lounge with a small black and white TV in the corner. Washing clothes was done in a sink in the outhouse and clothes were put through a mangle to wring out the water. Chickens roamed the garden and the child’s very worse job was when she had to defeather and gut one of the chickens, which fortunately wasn’t very often.
The child was always hungry and would creep out of her room at night time to steal food from the kitchen, and then she started to steal small amounts of money from her foster mother’s purse. She wasn’t really sure why she started to steal, as it was difficult to actually spend the money, so she hid it under the lino in her bedroom. The foster parents cottoned on to the fact that she was stealing money and confronted her, but she denied it.
They started to lock her in her room at night. But at 6 years old this child learnt to pick the lock of the room and get out so she could continue to steal food and money. She also started to steal sweets from the local shop.
Her foster family never seemed to realise that she was able to get out of her room until one morning when it was still dark the child decided to go for a walk. She got out of the house and started to walk up the road when not long into her walk a police car came along and tried to stop her. She ran away from them, running through a block of flats where they couldn’t follow. She managed to get back into the house and jumped back into bed.
The police knocked on the door and asked her foster parents if they had a little girl who just been outside. They couldn’t actually believe that she had been out but she had to confess to the police that it was indeed her and of course she got a lecture from them about her safety, which was something she hadn’t thought about, she was still only six.
The child always knew that she was fostered because whenever she was badly behaved her foster parents threatened to send her back to her parents. Not knowing who her parents were, she would plead with them not to do that.
At the age of 11 years, she almost died from a burst appendix. According to the doctors she had just an hour to live and so ended up having an emergency operation in the hospital’s instruments sterilising room as all the operating theatres were in use.
This was a pivotal moment in her life because one day a few weeks later when she came back from her final check up at the hospital, there was a knock on the door of her foster home and a man was standing there. She was told this was her father and that she had the choice to go with him back to her family for a couple of weeks holiday or stay with them; that she could come back to her foster parents if she wanted. She was confused but there was her suitcase packed and off she was sent with this stranger on a horrendous coach journey to Benson in Oxfordshire.
She went from a drab, colourless little house in South London to what seemed a big modern home with a large colour TV, and suddenly she was the oldest of six children, who were as confused by her sudden appearance in their lives as she was.
Alas, she soon found that this was not a happy family home with constant rows and abusive behaviour. And clearly her father didn’t want her in his life as he kept threatening to kick her and her mother out of their family home. She later discovered that her mother only went back to live with her father in order to get her child back from the foster home.
But when it came time to make the decision to stay with her new family or go back to the foster home, she recognised at the age of 12 that the influences she had in her foster home were definitely leading her down a path that was bad, and so she decided for better or worse to stay with her family.
Things improved when her father finally left the family home. And she experienced the love of a stepfather who was a very special person and gave all the family stability. But he was very strict, and the child decided that she could no longer live under such a restrictive household. Especially at the age of 15 when she was forced to leave school because her family could not afford for her to stay on.
Whilst she had not been a particularly diligent student, not much helped by the fact that because of family moves she had gone to four different secondary schools. When the education was taken from her, she was very upset. She left school with a few CSE’s which were worthless.
At the age of 16 she got a job in a shoe shop and somehow managed to rent a room. She did well in her job and quickly become a store manager, but any ambition she had of this job as a career ended abruptly when she was told by her district manager, a man – that she would never rise any further through the ranks because she was a woman! Well interestingly, that large shoe corporation no longer exists!
At the age of 18 she met her husband to be, her driving instructor, they married when she was 20 years old, and she had her first child at the age of 21. Sadly, she realised on the day that she came home with her baby from hospital that this was not the man she thought she knew and could not envisage living with him for the rest of her live.
When her child was almost two, she walked away and left everything behind as she didn’t feel she had rights to anything because it was her husband’s family home. Over the next few years she experienced homelessness, living in a friend’s hotel and then when she was able to rent a home for her child and herself, she worked two jobs to keep them in their home.
It’s not an understatement to say that the man she met and fell in love with then simply saved her and her child’s future because her ex-husband was fighting her for the custody and might well have won but for the fact that this man gave his commitment and much needed stability to her and her son.
There was a small hitch in this love story – the fact that he was Jewish, and she wasn’t. But living in North London for many years she felt drawn to Judaism and Jewish people and she wanted to become Jewish. She studied and converted through Finchley Reform Synagogue (FRS) and was much moved when her Rabbi Jeffrey Newman told her that she had been born with a Jewish soul.
She married her man, and they had a daughter completing their family of four in a home full of love and enduring family bonds.
Because she wanted to give something back to a community that was very supportive of her as she made her first faltering steps as a convert. She became a cheder teacher at FRS. At this point she never envisaged herself as having a career in Jewish education, she didn’t even realise that cheder teachers were paid.
Teaching in cheder was daunting in terms of the Jewish knowledge and Hebrew she possessed. But she discovered a creativity that she didn’t know she possessed and planned meticulously for every lesson, so at least she was a page ahead of the children.
But as a Jew by choice, it took her years to feel authentically Jewish and even longer to see herself as a professional Jewish educator. This only really started to develop as her knowledge of Judaism and skills as an educator grew.
So, it is hard to express in words the gratitude that girl – who if you haven’t guessed by now is me – feels towards the Jewish community for the amazing support I have received on my Jewish journey.
As someone who had to leave school at 15 with few qualifications, to achieve an MA in my 40’s was a defining moment in my life, and I finally felt that I could say I was a professional Jewish educator.
All of the programmes and learning that I have participated in through the years has helped to shape the educator I am today and deeply influenced my thinking about Jewish education and Jewish community.
For example, participating in the Ashdown Fellowship programme, introduced me to the concept of Invitational Leadership which suggests that communities need to care about how their members grow and live and that each person, child and adult is seen as a valuable and valued presence.
This still impacts today on how I try to care about all the children and adults that I work with. It means making every time someone enters the synagogue a significant experience, be that spiritually, intellectually or emotionally. I strongly believe that it is all of our task who work or volunteer here to help everyone who enters our community to feel a sense of acceptance and belonging.
I stay passionate about what I do because I love what I do. It’s such a privilege to have the freedom to be creative and to work with people whom you build relationships with and maybe impact their Jewish lives in some small positive way.
It’s not an easy task, it means never being complacent because we need to keep improving on what we deliver. We must continue to renew what we do for the next generation providing them with quality, caring Jewish education and community experiences.
I hope that if I am a role model in any way, it is that I try to always be kind and remain humble remembering whom I am working for, which is everyone in this EHRS community. And I hope that my story is an example of how transformative Jewish learning and Jewish community can be. And of course, the impact of a loving relationship.
Over 25 years of working here I have seen many changes happen and I truly believe that under the present leadership the future is very bright for EHRS. I know when it is my time to say goodbye to my role here, there are wonderful people having their own transformative experiences right now that will help them shape the future of EHRS youth and education. I think your community is truly blessed.
So, thank you all for allowing me to serve your community for the last 25 years. For obvious reasons I won’t say here’s to the next 25!
Marian Cohen June 2024
