Cohn – Younger Generations
By Barbara Cohn Younger in honor of 100 year anniversary celebration of Temple B’nai Abraham.
Stand at the corner of Elliot and Rantoul streets. Then walk down the hill along Elliott St. towards Park Street where, in 1940, I used to sit on my bike and coast by Barron the tailor at #107 and come to a stop at number 93 Elliott St. in the Italian-Jewish neighborhood where my family lived.
At number 93 was Acciavatti’s Market on the street level, alongside the barbershop and the neighborhood bar. My grandparents, Ida and Gus Bernson, lived upstairs over those businesses. Above them was our apartment, the Cohn’s and above us, my uncle and his family - more Bernsons. In front of the playground across the street, in a small patch of grass, a sapling I swung from, has become a large Maple. Like my family it continues to grow.
I attended first grade at the Washington Elementary School. My classroom has been replaced by aisle 5 at Walgreens on the corner of Elliott and Rantoul streets. My favorite story about the Washington elementary school is the one my brother told. He came home for lunch, as we did in those days, and my Yiddish speaking grandmother gave him some hamburger. When he returned to school the teacher polled the class to see what they had eaten at lunch. Arlen said “hock Fleisch”!
During those days my father worked with his father-in-law and brothers in law in a clothing and shoe store, the Bargain Syndicate. It was later that he founded Alcon’s, a combination of his first two initials (Abraham Louis-he was known as “Al”) and a less Jewish name take on Cohn once Cohen. Being Jewish was easy in the heart of the Jewish congregation, but not so in the greater community. I still remember children dancing around me on the playground, singing “blue, blue, you're a Jew” as if it were just song that described me and had no negative connotation. There were no Chanukkah songs at the Christmas pageant.
Arlen joined our dad at Alcon’s and went on to leave a legacy of care and service to the families of Beverly. Alcon’s credit consisted of a little notebook in which a payment of $1.00 per week would be entered and each item purchased would be recorded. No interest. No time limit. The books might last a lifetime . A - creative kind of Tzadakah.
Sometimes, with my grandparents, I attended the Base Ha Midrash (the house of prayers) an orthodox prayer house now marked only by a huge tree in a small empty lot on Beckford Street near Elliot street I can still see images of people walking to work at the United Shoe Machinery Company (Cummings Center) carrying their black lunch pails and sometimes crossing the street to avoid the Star of David.
My family's congregation was the Bow Street Shul. We left Elliott St. and moved just a few doors down from the temple. Quite often the doorbell would ring when we were still in bed and my father's presence was requested for a minion. The Sterman’s lived right next door to the temple and their grandmother lived across the street. Cynthia Sterman and later Diane, and I walked to school together and sometimes we were lucky enough to get a ride from the Sherman taxi company.
The temple was the center of much social activity for the adults as well as the teenagers. Usually the activity was in the temple. But the annual Sunday school picnic was at the Cherry Hill farm an actual working dairy owned by Hood’s now the Cherry Hill industrial park.
My sister was active in the Hadassah Youth and my brother in the AZA. Sally is still remembered as a youth leader by some of the elders of the community. My father was active in the temple brotherhood. My mother Lillian one of the founders of the Ladies Aid and a sisterhood president.
During the next years my father became active in politics and was always campaigning for something. He was Alderman for several years and then a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives the year he died. His achievements created a sense of pride for us and for the Jewish community.
Today Jews are not as self-conscious as I remember being in my youth. My brother Arlen and his wife, Marjorie raised their children at Temple B’Nai Abraham, and remained members themselves. Joe and I have just become reconnected through our children. Jim Younger and Andi Freedman and their children Zehava and Eli, the grandchildren and great great grandchildren of Lillian and Al Cohn as members of the temple. I look with joy at them and their Jewish pride and anticipate my own continued spiritual growth through theirs until we too are lights on the sanctuary wall.