From the havurah newsletter
In Memoriam: Susan Cole 1948-2021
by Aliza Arzt
by Aliza Arzt
Former Havurah member Susan Cole passed away on May 1st of this year. The many obituaries and tributes that have been written about her describe her as a force to be reckoned with in the spheres of special education and the law. Susan used her degrees in these areas, as well as her teaching position at Harvard Law School’s Education Law Clinic, initially to advocate for special needs students to insure that they received the services they deserved. More recently, she expanded her vision to compel the education community to understand and act upon the fact that traumatized students need to be offered support within the school, not punishment.
I knew Susan best in the days before this powerful aspect of her professional mission had crystalized. The Susan I knew was finding her way, along with me, as a new parent. Together we negotiated the terrain of learning to care for a child without losing ourselves in the process. Although it’s a stage of life that we left 30 years ago, I have many memories of us figuring it out: how to entertain infants and have a meaningful adult conversation at the same time, the time our four year-olds ran away together from the Havurah to Powderhouse Park to climb on the rocks, deciding whether or not coats needed to be buttoned on a windy day at pre-school, choosing a teacher to provide monthly Jewish education at the Havurah. Just as we had to find a way to teach our children to share, to resolve conflict and to stand up for themselves at the same time, as parents we also had to learn how much of ourselves to share with each other, when to compromise about our parenting values, and how to integrate our roles as mothers and as women when we were together.
Our children eventually chose different educational and social paths from each other, and Susan and I were in contact only occasionally. However, during the past year, we connected again through monthly Zoom gatherings along with our spouses (Meredith, and Susan’s husband David Eisen), former Havurah member Stephanie Loo and current member Ruth Bork and her husband Kerry. We could tell that Susan was getting weaker each month and she was unusually forthcoming about her cancer treatments. However, her focus was always on advocating for the needs and rights of the children in our educational system, as well as training young lawyers to carry on her work. She taught her final class of the semester 9 days before she died. Susan’s persistence and dedication is not something that all of us are capable of; her determination is a beacon to her family, her friends, her many students and the children she was able to help both directly and indirectly. May we be worthy of that light and able to direct even a small amount of it toward our own Tikkun Olam (the repair of the world).
I knew Susan best in the days before this powerful aspect of her professional mission had crystalized. The Susan I knew was finding her way, along with me, as a new parent. Together we negotiated the terrain of learning to care for a child without losing ourselves in the process. Although it’s a stage of life that we left 30 years ago, I have many memories of us figuring it out: how to entertain infants and have a meaningful adult conversation at the same time, the time our four year-olds ran away together from the Havurah to Powderhouse Park to climb on the rocks, deciding whether or not coats needed to be buttoned on a windy day at pre-school, choosing a teacher to provide monthly Jewish education at the Havurah. Just as we had to find a way to teach our children to share, to resolve conflict and to stand up for themselves at the same time, as parents we also had to learn how much of ourselves to share with each other, when to compromise about our parenting values, and how to integrate our roles as mothers and as women when we were together.
Our children eventually chose different educational and social paths from each other, and Susan and I were in contact only occasionally. However, during the past year, we connected again through monthly Zoom gatherings along with our spouses (Meredith, and Susan’s husband David Eisen), former Havurah member Stephanie Loo and current member Ruth Bork and her husband Kerry. We could tell that Susan was getting weaker each month and she was unusually forthcoming about her cancer treatments. However, her focus was always on advocating for the needs and rights of the children in our educational system, as well as training young lawyers to carry on her work. She taught her final class of the semester 9 days before she died. Susan’s persistence and dedication is not something that all of us are capable of; her determination is a beacon to her family, her friends, her many students and the children she was able to help both directly and indirectly. May we be worthy of that light and able to direct even a small amount of it toward our own Tikkun Olam (the repair of the world).
Click here to see the Boston Globe obituary.