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Recordiad sain / Audio recording: David Cohen
Oral history recording with David Cohen collected as part of The Hineni Project, an insight into the life and stories of a Jewish community in all its diversity. Hineni was a collaborative project between Cardiff Reform Synagogue and Butetown History & Arts Centre.
I was born and grew up in an extremely concentrated Jewish community in Montreal, Canada. Pretty much all the kids on my street were Jewish and my high school was at least 90 per cent Jewish. Mine was a Jewish upbringing but not a religious upbringing. I did my first degree in economics in my native Montreal. I came to Edinburgh University in 1972 as a graduate student, and I’ve been in Wales since 1986. I am now a professor of health economics at the University of Glamorgan and live in Llantrisant. I married a non-Jew, and we didn’t do anything religiously because neither of us were religious, but after our first child was born we decided we’d like our new daughter to have an identity and so my wife, Margot, went through conversion. According to the Orthodox, kohanim like myself are not allowed to marry converts, and the rabbi said Margot could not convert because the Beth Din wouldn’t accept our marriage. So we went to the Reform synagogue in Cardiff and they welcomed us with open arms; and Margot went through Reform conversion and that’s how we became part of that community. I didn’t practise religion at all; hadn’t really since my bar mitzvah and didn’t want to be involved in Margot’s conversion, but the rabbi was having none of that. I had to attend the conversion classes Margot went to, and that’s what got me back in contact with Jews. We were welcomed into the community, and when they found out I could read Hebrew reasonably, I got immediately sucked in to do more. I often lead the services as well as read from the Torah. I don’t really have faith as such. I very much want to identify with the community, though, and the synagogue is the focal point. I’m very glad that I joined Cardiff Reform. Had my wife not said that she wanted to have a religious identity, I’m certain I never would have come into contact with the community, and my life has been richer for having done so. I feel Welsh because Margot and I made an effort, and we also support minority languages in general. I’d hate to see Welsh die out. We raised our children through Welsh-medium schools so our children are Welsh speakers and very strongly identified Welsh, and Jewish sort of. When I was growing up in French Canada, they didn’t teach us French properly in school, so when my kids had an opportunity to be bilingual through a state school I jumped at it. They were the only Jews in the history of their school before or since. I don’t think either of my children ever felt any degree of anti-Semitism among their peers, certainly not among the staff, and they were accommodating because we’d take them out of school for the High Holidays, for example. There was never any challenging of us as parents about why we were doing that. In Montreal Jews were more open about their Jewishness; whereas here in Wales you don’t make as obvious a statement about the Jewish part. I’m very conscious of the fact that virtually all the people that I know here know very little about Judaism; whereas I just assumed that everyone who I spoke to in Montreal did know a lot, so the experience really couldn’t be more different. The enormous difference was living in an area where Jews were the majority to living in area where we are almost unique.