September / october 2006:

The Six Who Matter: Haviva Kohl
An activist who knows no educational boundaries.

Words by Laurie Siegel | Photograph by Sam Norval

Danny Kaufman Saranne Rothberg Gavriel Garrard Stephanie Stein Richard Bernstein Haviva Kohl

One would hardly guess that the woman sitting in Manhattan’s bard-themed eatery Edgar’s Café, prudently ordering a plate of raspberry rugelach — sugar-free, kosher — and a cup of latte — iced, non-fat — is the very same person who months before was living in an African mud hut, eating boiled rice and beans.

Resisting stereotype, during the past few years, Haviva Kohl, an Orthodox Jew from California, has spent the majority of her time in parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. There, she worked as a teacher and activist, creating educational opportunities in third-world countries under the auspices of Teachers Without Borders — a nonprofit organization that helps to improve the quality of education in the developing world.

Unlike most North American teaching positions that pose challenges such as standardized test preparation, Kohl’s recent teaching jobs came with less academic trials. In places including Burundi and Ghana, Kohl has narrowly escaped grenade explosions and gunshot; lived with the threat of rape; and suffered three bouts of malaria.

Belying her serious nature with her child-like dimple and glittering jewelry, Kohl jokes, “I’m often asked, ‘What’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing with a job like this?’” For Kohl, the road from all-girls yeshiva to places like Africa has been a clear, though sinuous one. It is a path largely informed by her Jewish identity.

Growing up in a non-observant home in southern California, an 11-year-old Kohl initially dreamt of competing in the Olympics as a speed skater. However, after a serious knee injury left her off her feet for a while, Kohl re-evaluated her life.

“When I fell, I began to question everything. Why did this happen to me? Is there a God? I decided I needed to focus on finding answers.” For Kohl, her external struggle led to an internal one, a struggle marked by a decision to focus on her inner, spiritual life.

So that she could attend a Jewish school in the Los Angeles area, Kohl left her home, living with seven different families in the span of six years. “I had to choose between my family and my Jewish education,” she says. “Without hesitation, I chose my education.”

Against the backdrop of her own struggle, Kohl realized that she wanted to spend her life helping those for whom education is likewise difficult to access. “During wartime in many countries, the only stability children have in their day is school,” she says. As someone who was forced to surrender her own stability in exchange for her education, Kohl wants to give to other children what she never had.

As admirable as this quest is, Kohl is often criticized by fellow Jews who cannot appreciate why she would direct her charitable efforts towards a cause that is not overtly related to Judaism or Israel. Yet Kohl sees her mission as consistent with, if even informed by, her Jewish life. “In Africa,” she explains, “I find a spirituality in the people. They have nothing, but will give you the shirts off their backs.” Kohl pauses for emphasis. “That is God.”

In a sense, she sees everything that she does as touched by her Jewishness. “Before I am myself, Haviva, I am a Jew,” she says, taking a sip from her latte.

To this extent, every teaching assignment that she takes is planned around the Sabbath. She carries a Shabbat kit, in which she places various objects, such as candles and a prayer book, so that she can perform Shabbat rituals.

The greatest challenge that Kohl confronts though is not religious observance, but what she calls “the loneliness factor,” the fiercely non-communal element that characterizes her life’s work. This, however, she sagaciously offers, “is where the spirituality is. Because when it’s Shabbat and I’m on a hilltop alone, all I have is God. That’s when I think, ‘Alright God, it’s me and you today’.”

Kohl’s life as an itinerant educator, ironically, is sustained by a single, unwavering core: “I don’t ask those questions about God and meaning anymore because I never found that there were really answers, except just believing.”

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