An after-Shabbat meal in the early 1970s on Milwaukee’s West Side proved to be a fateful moment in the cultural history of Jewish Milwaukee.
At that event, Rabbi Michel Twerski of Congregation Beth Jehudah took out his guitar and began singing one of the songs that he had composed by ear, without knowledge of musical notation.
Among the guests was Donald Cohen, M.D., the pediatrician for the rabbi’s children — and Cohen’s wife Lorraine.
Lorraine, who died Nov. 3 at age 82, was a pianist and music teacher; and Twerski’s song “stayed in my mind,” as she recalled in an oral history interview for the Jewish Museum Milwaukee made on July 14, 2010.
The next morning, she notated a piano arrangement of Twerski’s song and played it for him over the telephone.
So began Lorraine Cohen’s some 40 years of contributions to the musical life of Milwaukee’s Jewish community. They included:
• Making a recording and publishing a book of Twerski’s songs.
• Accompanying visiting cantors and other musicians.
• Playing for weddings and other events like graduations from the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study.
• Serving several terms as president of the (no-longer existing) Wisconsin Jewish Music Council.
• Organizing for 30 years the Summer Evenings of Jewish Music series at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
Not that she was uninterested in Jewish music or Jewish culture before that night. Cohen, nee Feigenbaum, was born in East Chicago, Ind., to an Orthodox Jewish family. “Our whole life revolved around Judaism,” Cohen said in the oral history.
Her family was Zionist as well, and Cohen said she was a member of Young Judea. She remembered attending the Chicago-area celebration of Israel’s independence in 1948.
The family also loved music. Her parents saw to it that Lorraine had piano lessons, beginning when she was 7, and that her younger brother Dr. Harvey (Phyllis) Feigenbaum, now of Indianapolis, Ind., had violin lessons.
While her training was in classical music, her father loved Jewish cantorial music and Yiddish songs, and often had his children play Jewish music for guests, Cohen said.
Cohen went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for college and earned a Bachelor of Music degree there. She also met her husband there; they married in 1953.
While her husband completed medical school in Madison, Cohen worked in various positions, including teacher and organist at Temple Beth El. After her husband’s residency and military service, the couple settled in Milwaukee, the home of her husband’s family.
(Full disclosure: Don Cohen’s father was the brother of this writer’s grandfather. In addition, this writer is a clarinetist who performed in some of the Summer Evenings of Jewish Music concerts.)
In Milwaukee, they at first belonged to Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue, where Cohen taught in the religious school. Later, they joined Congregation Anshe Sfard, which became Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah. She also was a private piano teacher.
But Cohen said she traced the beginning of her intense involvement in the Milwaukee Jewish music scene to her first hearing of a Twerski song.
Soon after that, in 1976, she became music teacher at the Hillel Academy Jewish day school, where she worked for 23 years. She taught singing and basic music theory and created choirs that performed for Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir when she visited Milwaukee and for Israel composer Naomi Shemer (“Jerusalem of Gold”).
Shortly after taking that position, her friend Tybie Taglin, then director of arts and culture at the JCC, persuaded Cohen to organize a Summer Evenings of Jewish Music series for the JCC.
“I was so sure it was going to fail” that “I composed my letter of resignation” in advance, Cohen told The Chronicle in the May 23, 2003, issue. Instead, the series proved so successful it ran from 1977 to 2007.
Moreover, the series covered the gamut of Jewish music — cantorial, klezmer, Israeli, Sephardic, Yiddish theater and Jewish contributions to classical and American popular music.
Cohen struggled with arthritis in her later years, until she finally had to stop playing. In 2010, she made her Jewish music library available to the community via donating it to the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
“I’ve always loved music and teaching,” Cohen told The Chronicle in 2003. “I don’t know which I love more. But I feel music cuts through divisiveness and relates to all denominations within Judaism.”
In addition to her brother and her husband, she is survived by sons Dr. Joel (Pearl) Cohen of New York City, Dr. Barry (Miriam) Cohen of Rehovot, Israel, and Dr. Kenneth (Rachel) Cohen of Efrat in the Judea region of the West Bank; 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Rabbis Michel Twerski, Nachman Levine and Wes Kalmar officiated at the funeral at ASKT on Nov. 4. Burial was in Mound Zion Cemetery.
The family would appreciate memorial contributions to ASKT, WITS, Hillel Academy or the JCC.
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