ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996 TAG: 9612100162
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-2 EDITION: METRO CINDY
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
In a culture in which Christmas saturates commerce and entertainment for well over a month each year, non-Christian parents face the daunting task of explaining to their children why they don't celebrate the holiday.
Many Jewish parents do that with a particular emphasis on Hanukkah, a holiday that usually falls in December and in which their children receive gifts, eat special foods, and light a distinctive candelabra. This year, the eight-day holiday begins at sundown tonight.
For Rabbi Kathy Cohen, the process of guiding Jewish children through a Christian holiday season starts early.
"Jewish parents who want to help their children with the Christmas season can't start in December," said Cohen, who arrived as rabbi of the Temple Emanuel congregation in May.
"When children feel good about being Jewish, it's not difficult for them to see the joy of somebody else's religion." That self-confidence and pride also help them "not to feel jealous or excluded."
Understanding and appreciating their Jewish heritage and traditions often begins with the celebration of the many Jewish holidays that occur during the year, most celebrated in the home.
While December raises an "extra challenge" for Jewish parents, Cohen said she thinks "it's OK for children to go to a Christian friend's house and help decorate the tree, and I would hope their friends would be comfortable enough to play dreidle (a Hanukkah game played with a special top) with the Jewish children."
"The most important thing is to help children be comfortable with who they are," including their Jewish identity, Cohen said.
Cohen and her husband have three children, ranging in age from 18 months to 6 years, and she also has a strong interest in the children of her congregation.
A desire to work with children was among the attractions to a life in the rabbinate for Cohen.
When she arrived at Brandeis University in 1980, Cohen was considering study to become a pediatrician or a rabbi.
"Both are helping professions, dedicating one's life to helping other people," but the call to become a rabbi eventually won out.
It didn't mean she abandoned all interest in medicine, however. Her rabbinical thesis was titled, "The weight of knowledge: An analysis of the work of Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg on the social and moral responsibility of the physician to the patient and society."
Though Cohen went to religious school and her family observed High Holy Days and home holidays, "Judaism in a spiritual sense" was not particularly important for her family as she grew up, she said.
However, in high school in Boca Raton, Fla. - where her family had moved from Pittsburgh - Cohen began "seeking meaning in my life and I happened upon Judaism."
As she took it upon herself to study and learn more, "I fell in love with it."
After graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis with a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern and Judaic studies, Cohen headed straight for Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where she received her master's degree and ordination in 1988.
She had twice served as an assistant rabbi - most recently in Westport, Conn. - when she was offered her current position at Temple Emanuel, Roanoke's congregation of Reform Judaism.
It marked both her first job fully in charge of all rabbinic responsibilities for a congregation, and Temple Emanuel's first female rabbi.
The combination seems to be working out fine.
"This congregation is extraordinarily vibrant, open-minded, caring, and interested in Jewish life and learning more about Judaism," Cohen, 34, said.
During her formal installation service Dec. 13, the rabbi from her former temple in Connecticut will officially pass the Torah - or scroll of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible - and, symbolically, the mantle of leadership to Cohen.
Her responsibilities as rabbi fall into three categories, Cohen said - "first and foremost, as a teacher as a spiritual leader and adviser and as a pastoral counselor."
Being a teacher extends beyond the pulpit and Jewish-school classroom, Cohen said, "even to the bulletin," which, when congregants finish reading, should leave them with "something they didn't know before."
The goal of all of her rabbinic roles lies in "enriching people's lives with a greater understanding of their Jewish heritage [and] helping people open their lives to having a greater relationship with God."
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