The Teacher

Bern Cohen stars as Rebbe Horowitz in the 2010 Sundance Festival selection, Holy
Rollers, which premiered May 21st nationwide. Holy Rollers is the story of a youth from
an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn who is lured into becoming an ecstasy
dealer by a pal who has ties to an Israeli drug cartel.

Bern’s other principal film roles include Tickling Leo with Eli Wallach, 27 Dresses with
Katherine Heigl, Fallen Star (formerly Goyband) with Tovah Feldshuh, and Brooklyn
Rules with Alec Baldwin.

Bern grew up in the Al Smith Projects in New York's Chinatown and attended Adelphi
University on full scholarship and started his New York professional acting career while
still in college.

By age 26, Bern had decided to leave acting in favor of a more involved role in parenting
his two children. He went into education, teaching and eventually becoming an
administrator, where he became known for an ability to turn failing schools into
successful schools with demanding academic models and supportive behavior
remediation.

After taking early retirement to return to acting studies with Penny Templeton and Ruth
Nerkin, Bern rejoined the New York acting corps.
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MATLACK: Tell me a little bit about the film and your role.

COHEN: Sure. Holy Rollers is taken from a real crime case that took place about six or
seven years ago involving a group of young Hasidic Jews from New York City,
who realized, after getting off a plane, that—you know, when they get off a plane,
and they're praying, and they're being very religious or spiritual, and thanking God
that they just landed safely and all that—they realize that the customs people never
inspect them, because the customs people would never go and say, “Hey, you, stop
praying, I want to search you.” So, one of them got the idea that they just smuggle
drugs. And it's a story about how this guy lured other young Hassidim into drug
smuggling without telling them, actually, that they were couriers. They were told
either that, in some cases, that they were bringing in medicine that was gotten
wholesale, and that's why they have to smuggle it in.
 And two young stars, Jesse Eisenberg, who just had Adventureland and Zombieland
and The Squid and the Whale, plays the young Hassid lured in by Justin Bartha,
who was in Hangover last summer, and he's now on Broadway, starring in Lend Me
a Tenor.

So these two guys create this little Jewish smuggling scene within the Hassidic
community, and I play their rabbi, who learned about it, and tries to get them to
stop.

MATLACK: It sounds like a great film. I'm going to have to check it out.

COHEN: Well, I'll tell you, it got into Sundance, which is terrific, since they only take
twelve films in the American competitive category, and there were about two
thousand applications. Probably out of about one hundred reviews I've read, I
would say ninety-seven percent were very, very positive.

MATLACK: So, let's talk about you a little bit. You grew up in the Al Smith projects in
New York.

COHEN: Right. The only white kid in my fifth and sixth grade classes—very interesting
time period.

MATLACK: What impact do you think that left on you?

COHEN: Well, it made me very international, and very multicultural. I grew up with a
dream of America being this place that people from other countries came to
because it was a great country. I mean, people learn that in your social studies
books, but I really felt that, and lived that, and grew up with that.

As a result, when I was a teacher, I worked in bilingual education and multicultural

education. Growing up like that, in a multicultural setting, made me very sensitive
and feel very fortunate about living in multicultural America. I became an ESL
teacher.

MATLACK: Tell me about that.

COHEN: Well, I went to Adelphi University on an acting scholarship. After I graduated,

and I also started working as an actor on Broadway, and also, working as a
substitute teacher to [support] myself. I realized, working in the schools, that it was
really needed there. So I ended up studying ESL, English as a Second Language,
and reading, and when I became a teacher full-time, I concentrated on that
population. My first teaching job was fourth grade teacher, but I spent most of my
career at the high school level.
 Shortly after I worked as a fourth grade teacher, I realized that there was a more
urgent need for me, and my personality, and my ability to work with tough, hard,
inner-city kids, because I grew up there myself and I wasn't afraid of them.

MATLACK: You became involved in taking over several low achieving New York City
schools.

COHEN: Well, after my career as a teacher, and I became an administrator, I got a

reputation for being an activist. At my first school that I became an administrator
of, it was a failing school, and it turned around within a year because of things I
did, and then the second school, same thing. And then I became a district
administrator, and turned around the whole district in Harlem and upper Manhattan.

Within eighteen months, you can turn around the worst school in the worst
neighborhood if everybody is on board. Then a high school came to me and said,
“Stay.” I thought that was a good idea, in terms of my age, and retiring, and
wanting to go back into acting, o I took over one of the worst high schools in the
state at the time. They called it “Drugs and Thugs High School,” and I stayed there
ten years, and then retired and went back into acting.

MATLACK: So how old were you when you went back into acting?

COHEN: Sixty-two.

MATLACK: Wow.

COHEN: Well, when I was 60, two years earlier, in addition to working full-time as a
principal, I decided to go back to school at night, to refresh my acting skills,
because I had an acting scholarship in college, and I was working off-Broadway,
but I really wanted to come back and get into film, which I had no training in.

And I guess, [because of] the more mature face, and being more mature, and also
new at the same time, I have had steady work for five years. It's been awesome.

MATLACK: Congratulations.

COHEN: It's been non-stop. I've done nineteen films with speaking roles, and plays and
musicals in New York. I've been very lucky—you know, the right energy, the right
place, and the right time. And it's working.

MATLACK: That's very inspiring. I have ten questions on our little quiz, and often, kind
of the first thing that comes to your mind is the best. The first one is, who taught
you about manhood?

COHEN: I would say my father.

MATLACK: And the next one is, how has romantic love shaped you as a man?

COHEN: Romantic love shaped me as a man because the woman with whom I have
romantic love has made me feel more comfortable in being a man.

MATLACK: What two words describe your father?

COHEN: Oh, the first word that comes to mind is community, and the second one is
strength.

MATLACK: How do you think you're most unlike your father?

COHEN: Oh, probably in the tenderness side of me, that he either didn't have, or I never
saw.

MATLACK: From which mistake did you learn the most in your life?

COHEN: I witnessed a crime, and reported it, but the mistake was that I did not tape
record or photograph. And as a result, I learned that whenever I am in an
unbelievable situation, I need to add another dimension to my own word.

MATLACK: What word what the women in your life use to describe you, and do you
think it's true?

COHEN: They would use the word patient.

MATLACK: Who's the best father you know, and what makes him so?

COHEN: The best father I know is my cousin Gerald. Outside of myself.

MATLACK: (Laughter.) How many kids do you have?

COHEN: I have two children.

MATLACK: How old are they?

COHEN: My son is 40, and he just returned yesterday from Nigeria. He was, for three
weeks, training doctors on how to improve their response to disasters and
emergencies.

MATLACK: Wow.

COHEN: And my daughter is 38, and she teaches on a reservation in New Mexico.

MATLACK: Wow. I guess you're right. But tell me about your cousin.
COHEN: My cousin Gerald—I'm struggling with words. I've known him all his life, and
he's 55 now. And I think he's the best father, because he's experientially challenged,
but he gave so much love to his two children that they exceeded many times the
expectations that one would have for a child of any parent. Just because of the love
and support that he gave them.

MATLACK: Yeah, that’s all it’s about.

COHEN: You know, he’s uneducated and unsophisticated, and yet both of his girls
ended up as valedictorians of their high school—valedictorians of large New York
high schools, because of the love and support that this uneducated and relatively
unsophisticated man gave his two girls.

MATLACK: Have you been more successful in your public or your private life, do you
think?

COHEN: Yes, I'd consider my private life. I feel very successful there. But I guess
successful means accomplishments, and I've been very accomplished in my public
life, both as an educator, and yes, I have four books published on education. The
New York Times published two books [on] multicultural education.

MATLACK: Wow, that's great. When was the last time you cried?

COHEN: I cried yesterday.

MATLACK: About what?

COHEN: When my son arrived home safely.

MATLACK: What advice would you give teenage boys trying to figure out what it
means to be a good man?

COHEN: Not to be afraid of their feelings.

MATLACK: Not to be afraid of their feelings?

COHEN: Yeah. Not to be afraid of their feelings, and not to be a slave to someone else's
feelings. I wrote that. “We are all slaves to our emotions”—William Somerset
Maugham—but “we should not be slaves to somebody else’s emotions”—B.
Cohen.

MATLACK: Last question. What's your most favorite, cherished ritual, as a guy?

COHEN: I would have to say fishing.

MATLACK: Fishing? Where do you fish?

COHEN: In the Hudson River. I'm standing in my apartment right now, which is
basically surrounded by the Hudson River in New York.

MATLACK: What kind of fish do you catch?

COHEN: This time of year, small, clean striped bass, swimming in from the ocean.
Another thing that's interesting that I'd like to share is, I lead annual trips to the
Amazon jungle.

MATLACK: Tell me about that.

COHEN: I just came back recently from my eighth trip to the Amazon, and I started it
when I was a high school principal, and it grew to a little side business, where now
it's primarily adults. I take fifteen people each year. I go Easter week, because it's
fascinating to observe Easter in the Amazon [in the] little villages. It's really
interesting.

MATLACK: What's your objective in taking the trips?

COHEN: I personally loved observing animals in the wild. My second goal is sharing the
excitement that people experience. It's just awesome. The whole idea of just seeing
everything from snakes, twelve-foot long alligators, monkeys, constantly… you
know, after two days, the monkeys aren't even exciting to you anymore. You look
for something more exotic.

MATLACK: Well, thank you for your time.

COHEN: Thanks.