Daniel Rosenberg Cohen I.

Daniel Cohen, the youngest of three siblings, is the son of Yolanda and Claude Cohen. Married to Nathalie Schwartz, Daniel is the father of Ariel and Nina. Here is your introduction.

My name is Daniel Roberto Cohen Rosenberg. My date of birth is July 18th, 1970. I was born in San Salvador, Hospital—I forget the name of the hospital.

(Gine—)

___ Ginecologica.

(Everyone’s born there.)

(Did you go to the American school?)

I went to the American school.

(And what was it like being a Jewish kid at the American school? Did you ever think about it?)

Never thought about it. Never thought about it. Ever since I can remember, from being a Jew, I never felt that confusion, for some reason. I don’t remember exactly why or why not, but I never felt any confusion. I never felt like, why Santa Claus or why not Santa Claus for me? or why Christmas for other people, why Hanukah for me? It was always very clear that I had a religion that was good and other people had other religions that were good, and that was that. I never felt different, though.

(You never felt different?)

I knew that I was different, but I never felt like I was, um, oddly different. I never felt confused.

(Do you feel like other kids your age that were Jewish were feeling confused, that it was a little more challenging for them?)

No, I don’t have any recollection of ever having a feeling for other people’s feelings for growing up Jewish.

(How—what was your home like at this point in time? You were born in 1970 and you stayed in Salvador until—?)

’79.

(—1979.)

We were Jewish. A typical family, you know, went to school, came home, practiced the Jewish religion. Like I told you, I remember going to Sabbath on Fridays and Noar. We did have a Hanukah bush, and we used the Hanukah bush to put the presents and we opened it during Hanukah days, if I remember correctly. That was my feeling.

(And your father is not from Salvador?)

No. My father is Tunisian, from North Africa.

(Do you identify with that side of your family, the North African, Sephardic side?)

Yes. I identify much more with Sephardic than anything else. My grandmother on my father’s side, she would—she’s kind of quiet, but she cooked Sephardic meals, like couscous. My father’s philosophy, which he passed on to us, has been Sephardic. So that’s what I assimilated the most.

(And you as a Sephardic family are a minority here?)

Yeah, totally. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything, but I do think about the Sephardic tradition. I would have liked to have learned more about it. I do get a sense that it’s a little bit more colorful, a little bit more— (pause) I don’t want to say lively, but yes, lively. (chuckles)

(Have you ever been to Tunisia?)

About six years ago I went with my father. We stayed there for about three weeks. He hadn’t been there in about thirty years, so he was really excited to go and I was really excited to be there with him. We rented a car and went all around. I love the desert, any desert, and we went to the Sahara. We went to see what they say is the first church, the oldest—I mean, the oldest synagogue, in Djerba, which is called in English “The Stranger.” In Arabic it was called “la griba.” Super-colorful synagogue. It was all different-colored tiles, painted with reds, blues. It wasn’t white like the ones we know. It was all different colors. It was all tutti-frutti, (laughs) with a part of the synagogue, a little nook where people would stick their notes and prayers and wishes and all that. It was interesting to see where the Sephardic in us came from.

(In 1979, how did your life change?)

We moved to Miami. We were on vacation. Up until now, I don’t know if it was that we were moving and our parents told us that we were gonna go on vacation, or if it was really supposed to be a summer vacation. And then while we were there, I think an offensive went on here, and we stayed. We just all of a sudden stayed. Then I started going to school in Miami. You go everywhere, there was a whole bunch of other Salvadorans there. In the school bus that I was in, there were about twelve Salvadorans in the back. So it felt kind of like it was what everybody was doing. So we stayed there, like, in ’85, maybe, ’84, my brother and sister went off to boarding school—in ’83 I went off to boarding school, when I was thirteen. And then kept on doing my studies, you know. Boarding school from sixth grade to ninth grade in New Hampshire, prep school in Connecticut, then college in Boston, and then I worked two years in Dallas and then came back here when I was twenty-six. So basically I left here when I was nine and came back when I was twenty-six.

(And when you think about New England, it’s quite a change from Salvador. Maybe Miami was a good stepping stone. But how did you feel in Miami when they told you that you weren’t going back?)

Coming back here? I thought it was gonna be like—I was like, “Oh, wow, this vacation turned into, like, a long vacation.” I liked going to the U.S. I liked being there. So I was—it was no big deal. And my whole family was there. It’s not like some of us stayed here and others went over there. Everybody was there. So it was a little easier, since we were together. And my uncles were there, and like I told you, a whole bunch of other Salvadorans were there. It was no problem. I spoke English, I spoke English just fine.

(So when you went to boarding school, what was that like? You were pretty young.)

At the beginning homesick. Being homesick takes a while to get over. Like maybe, like, a year, a year of really feeling homesick. And then after that, I really liked it. I really enjoyed it. It was a privilege growing up. It was in New Hampshire, where it was super-cold, it was in the mountains. But the school that I went to was in the mountains on the lake, and it was I don’t know how many acres of land, but it was just a whole—it was huge. It had its own ski mountain.

(What was it called?)

Cardigan Mountain School. Even though it was a hundred and eighty boys, it just didn’t seem to bad at the time. Sometimes we didn’t leave the campus for, like, you know, a month. But it was nice. There was one other Salvadoran there, too, He’s still a good friend of mine.

(How did the other kids treat you? Did they think you were different?)

You know, there, I did feel a little different, because there was a whole bunch of kids that weren’t—like, the Miami kids, being Latin over there was normal, and there was a whole bunch of other kids that weren’t used to seeing Latin kids. So there I felt a little different, I did feel a little alienated. El Salvador was going through a war, so they associated the war with me. They’d tease me a little. It didn’t bother me that much, but I remember being teased. It was a whole bunch of American kids that maybe never realized what life outside the U.S. was.

(And then you went to—?)

Loomis Chaffee in Connecticut.

(How was that?)

That was a lot different, a lot more diverse. They had people from all over the world. And when I got there, I had an advantage: that I was used to being in boarding school. So I wasn’t, like, a newcomer to being away from home. I was already used to it, so there it was easier for me than from anybody else. And since there was people from all over the world, and it was kind of liberal school and everybody was kind of maybe, like, a little hippie-ish, they took Latin Americans normal.

(What about Jews?)

The funny thing about Cardigan Mountain School is that it was like a—being Jewish there was kind of funny, because there was chapel every Sunday before dinner. Everybody wore gray pants and a green jacket and a green tie and a white shirt, and we all went to chapel. And they gave a sermon, which was, I guess you’d call it non-denominational, but it was a reverend that gave it. And I kind of saw the good in it and took that. But we did sing hymns, like “Kum-bay-ya,” like other songs that didn’t mention God in a way that it wasn’t my God. So I took it as my God and did that. It did feel kind of funny going to a chapel on Sundays. But I didn’t let it bug me. And everybody knelt, which I didn’t do. I just sat. At Loomis, being Jewish, it was normal. I mean, there was a bunch of Jewish kids there. I was one of ‘em.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.