Agudath Israel of America dedicated its new Washington office, honored its outgoing longtime Washington director Rabbi Abba Cohen and announced that Rabbi A.D. Motzen would succed him during a June 9 event.
Martin Marks, special assistant to U.S. President Donald Trump and director of Jewish outreach at the White House Faith Office, and Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, addressed the audience during the program, which also drew brief remarks, at the end, from Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.). Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) also attended.
The event was held on rooftop of the Hall of the States, which also includes offices of major news organizations, with sweeping views of the U.S. Capitol and Union Station.
Rabbi Yissocher Frand, a rosh yeshiva at Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, told attendees that he has known Cohen for 50 years, since the outgoing Agudah Washington director was a student in his first class.
“I started teaching at Yeshivas Ner Yisrael August of 1976. The first students of a teaching career are like your first born,” Frand said. “You never forget your first borns, and I’ve never forgotten him.”
For the last 37 years, Cohen “has been on a mission to serve the Jewish people,” Frand said. “That service on behalf of the Jewish people includes everything from education to healthcare to kashrus to workplace protection, and the list goes on and on.”
A lesson that rabbinic commentaries have learned from assignments like the one on which the biblical Joshua sent two spies is that “It’s not about you. It’s about the mission,” Frand said.
“That defines Abba Cohen,” the rabbi said. “It was never about him. It was never about his reputation. It was never about advancement. It’s all about the mission, and that, if I may say, is a rare commodity in this city. It’s all about self-promotion. On being in the news. On being on television. The front page of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And that’s not Abba.”
“He’s honest as the day is long. He can’t be bought. He can’t be influenced,” Frand said.
Marks, director of Jewish outreach at the White House, told attendees that he always tells Motzen that he and Agudah need to take more credit for the impact that they are having.
“So much of it is done quietly,” he said.
“Almost any time I get flummoxed with a policy question, I know I turn to Agudah, I know I turn to Rabbi Motzen, and it has just made the world of difference in getting things accomplished,” Marks said.
At the end of the event, Fine, the Jewish congressman from Florida who wears a kippah, told attendees that he opted to walk home one day without security, although he was advised against doing so, and someone on a bike asked if he was Rep. Fine.
When he said he was, the man said something antisemitic to him and then started to ride away on his bike, the congressman said.
Fine told attendees that he’d vowed to always speak out against Jew-hatred, after going to the hospital many times as a kid, because classmates tried to find his horns, he said. So he asked the man on the bike if that was all he had to say.
Fine told attendees that he used strong words, just as the man had cursed at him. The man then turned his bike around and came at him.
In the end, the biker “ended up on the ground,” Fine told attendees.
