Insatiable Desire for Learning

Moshe Cohen teaches a class in Yiddish and another called “The History of the Jewish Mystery and the Mystery of the Jewish History, From the Historical to the Hysterical.” He believes in entertaining as well as challenging his students. Cohen, 68, lives in Van Nuys. I was born in Poland in 1922. My father left Europe in 1927 to pick up some of the gold that Columbus left in the streets of America, and my mother and my sisters and I stayed there for seven years until he became a citizen in 1934.

Back in Poland, in a little town called Drobnin, not far from Warsaw, I was raised by four uncles. Every week, when I came to their homes on the Shabbat, a different uncle had me. They took turns at me, in my formative years. I was going to school, and at the end of the week they’d say, “Moshe, did you ask any good questions?” The answer’s not important, just keep on asking questions.

That was a very important thing that was imbued in me, and I think it has a lot to do with my state of mind, my desire for learning, because I’m constantly asking people questions, to provoke them, so they can think.

Whatever I learn, I like to share. In fact, I have a business card. My card says, “Have Torah, Will Travel.” I go anywhere, anyplace. Anybody that calls me, I’ll go and I’ll give them a class on any subject, but I’ll manage to get in a little Torah, a little Talmud in it.

I travel all over. On Saturdays I’m occupied at the temple in Encino twice a month, and once a month I go to Agoura as guest teacher, and twice a month I go to Venice for a class.

I’m not ordained. I don’t have my Ph.D. In fact, I gave myself a title. I have a bachelor of humor in Torah, a “Bh.T.”

My big squawk is these title people. You got a title, you got a doctor, what do you do with it? Have you grown? You’re living off what you learned in school 30 years ago. Have you learned anything new?

I tell my personal physician (he comes to my classes), “Leo, what have you learned lately? Have you discovered any new diseases?”

I like to find humor in everything. People who are religious have a tendency to take things too serious. When it’s too serious, it can’t change. If it can’t change, that means I’m right and you got to be wrong. I tell them right is not the opposite of wrong. Unless you have a little humor involved, you can’t see it two ways.

People I enjoy. I learn from people, from the questions that they ask, from the notions that they have. Nothing makes me happier than for someone to say to me, “Oh, but on page so and so it says different.” I say, “Good for you. Let’s examine it. Let’s find out, where do we differ?”

I have the need to share. I can get 50 calls a week from different schools and different people. I change my phone message three or four times a week, whatever turns me on. And it usually has to do with a festival, with a holiday or with something personal.

I just became a widower this year, so this phone is kind of like a lifeline. People knew last year when my wife was dying. I’d left my message, “Please don’t give up on me.” I’d come home at night, the machine was blinking, I’d find 20 phone calls. That was my lifeline, people that called me. And now it’s my lifeline too.

When I came to this country, I was really a big boy. I was 12 already, and I knew everything. So my father and I never got along, and I ran away from home.

My father was a scholar, but he also had to work for a living. I discovered that during the Depression, when he was eking out a living, my father always found time to go into some school or temple and give a lecture, and he never took money for it.

I had this insatiable desire to learn ever since I was a kid, and I had a need to share. That’s my heritage, I think, to share that which you learned. That’s what makes me. Even though I didn’t talk to my father for 30 years, we had the same drive.