Indiana Catholic college recalls era of change as it honors rabbi

Even now, 41 years later, the photograph of Seth Cohen’s bar mitzvah carries an element of surprise, even shock.

There is the bar mitzvah boy reading from the Torah. There, behind him and to his right, is the rabbi, who is also Seth’s father. And there, to Seth’s left, are … well, it doesn’t seem possible, but they certainly appear to be … they’re definitely dressed like … could they be?

Yes, those are nuns behind Seth, an entire choir of them, dressed in habits, preparing to sing in Hebrew.

FOR THE RECORD: An earlier headline on this story incorrectly referred to Bernard Cohen as a “former Jewish teacher.” Cohen is Jewish and a former teacher at St. Mary-of-the-Woods.

Seeing them, you can begin to appreciate why Seth Cohen’s bar mitzvah in 1969 captured national attention. It was, in fact, the culmination of a groundbreaking period of collaboration between a very Catholic institution, St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Terre Haute, Ind., and a very Jewish rabbi, Bernard Cohen of Brooklyn, N.Y., and later Los Angeles.

On Saturday afternoon, Bernard Cohen, now 80 and living in Westwood, will be back in Terre Haute to receive an honorary doctorate as the all-women’s school recognizes the man who, by some accounts, was the first rabbi on the faculty of a Roman Catholic college in the United States.

Earlier this week, he sat down in his Wilshire Boulevard apartment to reminisce.

In 1962, Cohen was growing bored as the young assistant rabbi of a large Reform temple on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, N.Y. It was a good job, he said, and he augmented it with stints on radio and television, but he was restless and wanted a congregation of his own.

When a position opened at United Hebrew Congregation in Terre Haute, he said, few rabbis were interested. It was small and it was far from the centers of Jewish life. But he was intrigued. “I thought it was a perfect place to find myself,” he said.

Once there, he was invited by the Jewish Chautauqua Society, a group that formed in the 1890s to teach immigrant Jews about Judaism, to take on a stint as a guest lecturer at St. Mary-of-the-Woods, the oldest Catholic women’s college in the United States.

This was at the time of the Second Vatican Council, when Roman Catholicism was opening itself to reform and renewal. For the first time, the United States had elected a Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. Walls between the faiths still stood, but doors seemed to be opening.

“The word ‘ecumenism’ was really like a new word,” Cohen said. “It hadn’t really become a word in the vocabulary.”

At first glance, St. Mary was an unlikely incubator of social change. The campus had a timeless quality, with elegant old buildings set into park-like grounds. A bridge joined its two halves: There was the “mother house,” a convent where nuns were in training, and the college itself. The nuns weren’t cloistered, but they kept the modern world at arm’s length. Some of the students had never met a Jew, Cohen recalled.

But the college was, in fact, eager to embrace change, and specifically to embrace Cohen. After a year as a visiting teacher, he was asked to join the faculty, to teach Jewish history and the Old Testament. Oddly enough, he fit right in.

“They never did anything to make me feel uncomfortable,” he said. “St. Mary-of-the-Woods is a very sensitive community.”

A former student, Mary Pat Kelly, remembered him as one of the most dynamic professors at the school. “His courses were just wonderful,” she recalled in a phone interview . “He was extremely charismatic, and his wife Doris — they were young and they had young children, and they just became part of the life of the campus.”

For young Catholics like Kelly, it meant exposure to ideas they never would have encountered. Cohen taught them the soulful stories of the Hasidic masters and challenged them to confront the horror of the Holocaust. “I remember him saying, it’s hard to wrap your head around 6 million, but if you just imagine one child being carried into the gas chamber.” Her voice trailed off. “It changed me.”

Cohen left in 1970, the year after Seth’s bar mitzvah. As much as he loved Terre Haute, he said, he recognized the need to be in a bigger place.

After a brief stop in Springfield, Mass., he made his way to Los Angeles, where he accepted a job at Temple Solael in West Hills. It later merged with Temple Judea of Tarzana, where Cohen remains a rabbi emeritus. While at Temple Solael, Cohen founded the multifaith Clergy Network, which later was folded into the Valley Interfaith Clergy Council, but not before spinning off branches in more than a dozen other cities.

He is, today, startlingly fit, tanned and energetic; his physical regimen includes hitting the gym every morning at 5:30 a.m. for four miles on the treadmill.

He has never forgotten St. Mary-of-the-Woods, and his former students haven’t forgotten him. “They say he was the best faculty member they had in their entire life,” said the school’s president, David Behrs, who added that alumnae are “coming out of the woodwork” to attend the commencement. Behrs, hired three years ago, is the first male and first lay president of the college, proof, he said, that its commitment to change hasn’t ebbed.

Kelly, who abandoned plans to become a nun and went on to a successful career as a writer, said she plans to fly back from a work trip to Ireland for the commencement. When she looks back at her time in college, memories of Cohen are mixed with recollections of a time of great hope — for the future of the country, the Catholic Church and the idea that faith need not divide people.

She recalled the bar mitzvah of Cohen’s oldest son, Jeffrey. There were no singing nuns at that service, she said, but nuns were in attendance. She remembered sitting in the synagogue, watching the sunlight pour through stained-glass windows, and said that “it just seemed like such a moment of progress …. I think we all felt like we were part of something that was very positive and would continue to bring people together in a way that hadn’t always been the case.”

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com