Cohen
Continued from Page 24
“That’s right. I didn’t go to college. I went
to graduate school.”
In 1985, Cohen graduated from
Bradford College in Haverhill, Mass., with
a degree in creative arts. After working
briefly for a Huntingdon Valley company,
he switched over to the mental health field,
working for agencies in Germantown and
Mount Airy before moving back to the
shore to take a position at Oceanside
Convalescent Center. That evolved into a
job at Seashore Gardens Living Center, a
Jewish agency in Galloway Township.

“It was always about helping people,”
explained Cohen, who recently led the
seder at The Chelsea at Jenkintown, a
nursing home. “It was never about making
money or having money.

“But the reason I moved back here was
because I got accepted into graduate
school at Gratz in 2007. I got my master’s
in Jewish studies in 2010. I wasn’t after a
career. I just wanted it. Then I decided to
get some graduate certificates.”
Of the event that sent him careening
for a time, he was philosophical.

“Anybody can get a stroke,” he warned.

“You don’t have to be a certain age. It
knows no bounds.”
The effects of the stroke left him as
much emotionally as physically damaged.

“The one thing I did was volunteer,”
said Cohen, who volunteers at Moss
three days a week and Chelsea twice a
week and, whenever he can, tries to get
over to Gratz. “I ran the interfaith serv-
ices and got very close to some of the
residents there.”
He also became friends with a woman
who worked at Gratz named Lenore
Bryant; she died in December 2015.

“She had set me up with Ellen
Goldberg, who manages the volunteers at
Moss,” said Cohen, who never married or
had children. “After Lenore died,
[Goldberg] said, ‘Why don’t you volunteer
at Moss?’
“Now I go into patients’ rooms. I pick
up their spirits. I hear their stories. I do
things I never had done for me. And what
I like about the place is I don’t have to hide
anything there. I can be me.”
For all the progress Cohen has made,
he still requires daily care from JEVS,
which includes help with his bathing,
dressing, eating (he receives Meals on
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Wheels) and other basic functions most
take for granted.

“We so often see people in this position
just quit,” said JEVS publicist Justin
Windheim. “They figure, ‘This is my life.

This is how I’m going to be.’”
Cohen has those moments, too.

“There are still days when I wake up
and, for about a minute and a half when I
think about all the stuff I have to deal
[with], I think, ‘I don’t want to be here
anymore,’” he said. “Then I say, ‘OK,
enough of that.’ Now I’m ready to go.”
Those who know him best find his
progress hard to believe.

“I never would’ve expected him to be
where he is now,” said his younger brother,
Jonathan. “If you’d seen him in the hospi-
tal you would’ve shaken your head. Even a
year ago I’m surprised how far he’s come.”
So is his mother.

“I’m so proud of him,” Ellen Cohen
said. “The fact [that] Russell has accom-
plished what he has is amazing. He was
always striving for independence, and
now he’s got it. It gives him a feeling of
success.” l
Contact: jmarks@jewishexponent.com;
215-832-0729 &AMILǩMEANǢ
7ǏAǠǏHOMǏ “It’s better than the outside world. We chose
our home and our new family. We are together
and appreciate the needs of each other.”
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6500 Tabor Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19111
26 MAY 18, 2017
THE GOOD LIFE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



87-Year-Old Walter Berk
Making an Aliyah Pitch
to Help Israel
JON MARKS | JE STAFF
Walter Berk subscribes to the words of Hall of
Fame pitcher Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back.

Something might be gaining on you.”
In Berk’s case, it’s because he doesn’t
like to be reminded of his past .

See Aliyah, Page 28