A rabbi’s influence

 Rabbi Henry Cohen, 1863-1952, was an odd fit for Galveston. Several things set him apart from the  Texans.

He was educated. He was a native of London, and he spoke like it. He also sang English dancehall songs that his long-suffering wife thought naughty.

The rabbi was small — there was some debate about whether he reached 5 feet — and he tore around Galveston on a bicycle. He was such a bad driver he was forbidden from getting behind the wheel of a car.

He wore neat clothes — if you overlooked the pinholes made by the ash from his cigars. He wore crisp white shirts, and he wrote the names of patients at the medical school’s hospital on the starched cuffs. He insisted on seeing all the patients, regardless of faith. He said:

 

To me there is no such thing as Episcopalian scarlet fever, Catholic arthritis, or Jewish mumps.

 

When I first moved to Galveston and asked people about the place, I was surprised how often they quoted that line. Cohen’s influence could still be felt 40 years after his death.

The bit about his being a bad driver was not hyperbole. As the rabbi aged, a series of teenage boys who were members of Temple B’nai Israel were assigned to drive him.

One was Jack Miller, who became a businessman after service in World War II. Even as a teenager in the 1930s, Miller was 6-foot-1. The rabbi was impressed.

Near the end of his life, Cohen’s memory faded. When Miller would stop to visit, the rabbi couldn’t recall his name but would greet him with a joyous shout: “Six-foot-one!”

When I got to Galveston, Miller congratulated me on my new job at the newspaper. And, after some pleasantries, he said: “And now what are you going to do for the community?”

He suggested I help the Salvation Army.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up in fundamentalist churches, but I had a hard time seeing myself as a volunteer for the Salvation Army.

That’s when Miller told me he was Jewish. He said the Salvation Army operated the only homeless shelter on Galveston Island. The city had a problem caring for poor people, and so he joined the board of the Salvation Army and helped raise money. If he had to sing a chorus of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” now and then, it was a small price to pay. So he signed up. Maybe I should too.

Too often, we think of influence as something bad. We forget it can be a force for good.