Julius and Bessie Rose (Basha Reyzl or Batya) Cohen

Date: About 1870 to 1964
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Hacohen Kahanski Koganski

Julius and Bessie Rose (Basha Reyzl or Batya) Cohen

From The story of the Julius Cohen family of Seattle, Washington, prepared by Joseph Cohen.^[1]

Julius Cohen (Yehudah Koganski) was born to Abraham Koganski in Budvich, Lithuania very early in the 1870’s. He was the youngest of Abraham’s seven children, his birth following soon after that of the only daughter Rose, who later became Mrs. Louis Stein. Julius’s childhood was spent mainly in attendance at a cheder, in performing many chores about the home and in its adjoining garden plot and in playing with other children of his own age, particularly with cousins from other lines of his grandfather Yehudah Hacohen’s family. When he approached the age when he would be destined to serve as a draftee in the Czar’s army, his family in order to disqualify him permanently from military service for fifteen years in some distant portion of the empire where he might forget even his mother-tongue, arranged, as they had with respect to each of his older brothers, to have the index (trigger) finger of his right hand broken at the lower joint and bound inward until it healed in that doubled-over position. In no way did this blemish subsequently turn out to be a handicap.

At approximately the age of twenty he married Basha Reyzl Rubinsky of the nearby town of Libava. Three children were born to the couple in Budvich: Harry (Hirsch Zvi) in 1895, Samuel (Shimon) in 1897 and Marion (Rasha) in 1899. Julius supported his family in Budvich at the meager level of the local Jewish population generally by operating a bakery.

In 1900, he followed the course of all of his older brothers and of his brother-in-law in migrating to America and, more specifically, to South Bend, Indiana where they had all settled.^[2] Until he could accumulate enough money to bring over and support his family in the new country, Basha Reyzl and the three young children remained behind, living near relatives on her side of the family in her birth-place, Libava. Julius was unable to send for them until after three years, that is, late in 1903. He supported himself at first by operating a saloon, above which the first living quarters of the family were established and where Joseph, the fourth child, was born in 1904. Later Julius was employed as a clerk by his brother-in-law in Stein’s Dry Goods Store. By 1900 he had earned enough even to undertake building a house, the most distinctive feature of which was a mikveh in the basement. The many Cohen families in South Bend, including the Steins, all lived within easy walking distance of each other, and the parents and children were all much involved with one another. They all remained observant orthodox Jews, but varied from each other in their degree of religiosity.

Julius’s second cousin, Julius Shafer (Yehuda Shafsky), who also had been named after the family’s now earliest known progenitor, and who had been a childhood play-mate, had come to the United States in 1884 at the age of twelve, taking along with him his even younger brother Izzie. After sojourning a few years in Leavenworth, Kansas, where they had an uncle, probably on their mother’s side, and in Taylor, Texas, the lifelong inseparable brothers finally settled in Seattle, where they prospered as clothing merchants, particularly during and after the Alaska Gold Rush of the 1890’s. When he began to make annual buying trips to the East Coast, Julius often stopped off in South Bend to visit his relatives of the Abraham Cohen branch of his family. On a few of those trips east he continued on across the Atlantic to visit the members of his family who still remained in Budvich. In the course of time, Julius Shafer arranged to bring over his second younger brother and both his married sisters, Mrs. Bessie Emanuel and Mrs. Starin and their families. It was probably during such a stop-over in 1907 or 1908 in South Bend that he urged his cousin Julius consider moving to Seattle, where he promised him employment as a salesman in the Shafer Brothers’ Men’s Clothing Store at a somewhat higher weekly wage than he was being paid at that time. The Alaska-Yukon and Pacific International Exposition was then in prospect, and Mr. Shafer needed to expand his sales force.

In the spring of 1909, Julius again ventured westward in advance of the rest of the family, but this time he was able to send for them within a year. Mr. Shafer put Julius in charge of his policemen’s, firemen’s and street-carmen’s uniform department. After about a year, he decided to launch his own uniform business, but he could not “make a go of it.” Business in Seattle was at a low level between the end of the World Fair and the outbreak of World War I. Between 1911 and 1914, he worked for John Danz, who operated a group of workingmen’s clothing stores in the Pioneer Square area. He again launched forth on his own in 1914, this time successfully. From then on he was able to support his family in relative comfort. Sam who had worked as an after-school delivery boy at the Shafer and Danz businesses assumed progressively more responsible tasks in his father’s business and, subsequently, became his junior partner.

Julius and Basha Reyzl’s fifth child, Dov, was born in Seattle in 1912. In Budvich earlier, Basha Reyzl had had very severe complications in giving birth to their firstborn child, Harry, which may account for his having become retarded in his mental development. Harry died in 1966.

Julius is remembered by his family and friends, and this is confirmed by photographs of him, as having been a fairly tall and well-built man with handsome features. His most marked personal quality was his outgoing friendly and cheerful manner. He fully enjoyed operating his uniform business, partly because it entailed dealing with a large fixed clientele, and he relished greatly being involved with people. He came to know his customers as persons and, particularly, those who were having financial problems and difficulties in meeting payments in what was largely a credit business. The range of problems in which they confided in him entailed even his serving on some occasions as a marriage counselor. He came to be on the very closest terms with the successive chiefs of the Seattle Fire Department and the superintendents of the Seattle Transit System. He received many testimonials of appreciation by his clientele of uniformed city employees.

He was active in the affairs of the Congregation Bikur Cholim and served for a number of years as vice-president of the Seattle Talmud Torah. Very soon after his arrival in the United States he began to subscribe to, and to read regularly, the Yiddish-language Jewish Morning Journal, published in New York City. The Yiddish press generally at that time had more depth and breadth in its contents than did the English-language press of which it was a counterpart. Whenever any reference was made to his paper, Julius would respond by saying “You know, the Jewish paper tells you everything,” with as much pride with which the management of the N. Y. Times boasts, “All the news that’s fit to print.”

During its earlier years in Seattle when the family means were sorely limited, he cut the boys’ hair, repaired the shoes of all members of the family, grew vegetables in the back yard and raised chickens there. Everyone in the family remembers vividly when he successfully performed major surgery on the ailing best-laying hen in the flock, restoring her to full health and productivity. He did virtually all the repairing and maintenance on the home.

Basha Reyzl was the daughter of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Rubinsky of Libava, all of whose life had been devoted to Torah in its diverse aspects. She, too, was a youngest child. Her father died when she was not more than twelve years old. Notwithstanding this early deprivation, or possibly because of it, she had an extraordinary fixation upon him. That he was very salient in her imagery was evident by her frequent references to him. The most striking instance of this occurred in 1929 when the Seattle newspapers reported that a massacre had occurred in Hebron, Palestine, and that a large number of the local population, including many yeshiva students, had been killed, without any listing being made of the names of the victims. For a number of days the family did not know whether its youngest member, Dov, of whom more later, who was then studying at the yeshiva might be one of the victims. On the morning following the newspaper report, Basha Reyzl declared that she was confident that all was well with Dov, because her father had appeared to her in a dream, and whenever her father appeared to her in a dream all went well. It was on her account principally that the home came to have a rich Jewish religious character. Her dominant preoccupation was with the Jewish education of her children. This preoccupation caused her to become involved personally with the provision of Jewish education to others in the community. She had extraordinary pride in her background - a feeling of Yichus - and wished ardently to see her family tradition maintained.

Basha Reyzl died in 1943 in her late 60’s. Julius passed away in 1964 at the age, approximately, of 94.

Sources

1. ↑ Document in the possession of Harvey Levitt. Wiki'd with annotations by K. Bloom.
2. ↑ See: South Bend, Indiana Cohens