Two Whose Memories are Blessings: Joel Cohen, Ellen Fox Lorang

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — One of our beloved humor columnists, Joel Cohen, has died in New York City, his children have informed me. The news came just two days after I had attended the funeral in San Diego of Ellen Fox Lorang.

Joel had written columns from his home on Staten Island, New York City, and we were benefitted by 182 of his articles over the years. The most recent and apparently the last he wrote appeared in San Diego Jewish World on March 17.  It was about Steven Skybell, the actor who plays Tevye in an all-Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof. 

An obituary in the Staten Island Advance reported that he died April 19 at the age of 94, and is survived by a daughter Ann and three sons Harvey, Alan, and Ivan, and a grandson Adam.  Nancy, his wife of 68 years, died three years ago.

Joel was a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, served in U.S. Army Intelligence, worked for Fairchild Publications and ABC News, wrote books about baseball players Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron and Tom Seaver, among others, and later embarked upon a six-decade long freelance writing career of which we have been the beneficiary since June 17, 2016.  Ironically, his first column—a satire about Donald Trump—also mentioned Fiddler on the Roof. 

That column, inaugurating his “Just Kidding” series, began: “Because I want to make Russian Jews great again,” Donald Trump said he’s agreed to play Tevye in a special production of Fiddler on the Roof.  The show will necessarily be a limited run production (ending by Inauguration Day, ‘since all the polls show I’ll win the Presidency by an incredible margin,’ Trump said.) It will also feature former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as Golde and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as the Rabbi.”

The obituary said Joel was an active member of Congregation B’nai Israel and served as president of the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island, which in 2015 inducted him—an active tennis player into his eighties—as a member of its Sports Hall of Fame.

In a eulogy at Joel’s funeral on April 21, his son Ivan, whom Joel persisted in calling “The Baby,” retold one of his father’s favorite stories: “One day a man was walking along and saw a penguin on the sidewalk. So he took his belt, made it into a leash, and walked the penguin to the nearest police officer. ‘Officer,’ he asked, ‘what should I do with this penguin? So the officer says, ‘Take him to the zoo.’ The next day, the officer sees the same man walking with the same penguin. ‘I thought I told you to take that penguin to the zoo!’ he said. ‘I did!’ the man answered. ‘We had such a good time, today we’re going to the movies!’

Another son, Harvey, commented that among the lessons he learned from Joel was “how the seemingly tiny, minor things that a person does in his life, the little kindnesses, are the things that we remember and enlarge us – not the fact that we once ran a corporation or accumulated a big stock portfolio.  We all also knew my dad to be a deeply ethical man who moved through life with absolute integrity—never wavering from the bedrock of his principles – freedom of expression, justice and equality.”

At the shiva, Joel’s son Alan commented, “He was one of the best storytellers I know – and even if he repeated those stories more than a few times – I will miss hearing those stories for the rest of my life.  Dad would say ‘have you heard this story before?’ I would say ‘yes.’ He would say ‘how many times?’ I would say ‘a lot.’  He would say ‘not enough, and tell it again.”
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His daughter, Ann, his oldest child, said that when Joel was moving to a smaller apartment a few years ago, he was worried that it might be too small for entertaining purposes. “When we celebrated his 94^th birthday last May, in that apartment, it was indeed standing room only.”  Surveying the crowd of people who came to memorialize him, Ann remarked: “This certainly isn’t the party we imagined .. but we know he would be very, very pleased at the turnout.”

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Last Sunday, a huge crowd turned out at El Camino Memorial Cemetery in San Diego for the funeral of Ellen Fox Lorang.  It was officiated by Cantor Hanan Leberman, who had arrived from Israel only days before.  But after years of commuting between Jerusalem and San Diego, Leberman had come to know Ellen and her husband, Phil Lorang, very well.  He told of her spotting a rip in his shirt and retrieving it sometime later to sew it for him.  He said she also made homemade quilts perfect for his young children to snuggle into as they go to bed.  They may not remember Ellen, he said, but they will carry with them the memory of her handiwork.

I remember Ellen’s service as the volunteer librarian at Tifereth Israel Synagogue.  A very orderly person, who was everyone’s go-to for advice on computer problems, she whipped the library into shape, creating cards for each of the hundreds of books, maybe even a thousand or more, in the synagogue’s library.  She would arrange for synagogue members to read from children’s books to preschoolers.  It’s quite a feeling when as an adult you’re sitting on a chair, and little children are looking up at you expectantly from their cross-legged positions on the rug, as you read stories to them, making sure to show them the pictures.

Ellen, 72, was an active member of the Sisterhood of Tifereth Israel Synagogue – even as her husband Phil was a leader of the Conservative congregation’s Men’s Club.  A message signed by Sisterhood’s co-presidents Judy Gumbiner and Judy Shear recalled that Ellen had “brought us into the future by upgrading our publicity communications with programs such as Constant Contact for our emails and WordPress for uploading all our Board reports and Minutes so we could save trees.”

In 2020, that Sisterhood message penned by Cailin Acosta continued, “she led Sisterhood Shabbat and all those involved joined hands at the end to sing ‘Adon Olam’ and sang to the wonderful rendition of ‘I Am Woman Hear Me Roar.’ As 2020 continued, we all know the world stood still.  She taught many of us how to Zoom or even learn what Zoom even meant.”

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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net