1
Iz It Coz I'ze Welsh?
AS A CHILD, MY DAD MADE US WATCH AMERICAN SHOWS HE LOVED GROWING UP, EVERYTHING FROM SGT. BILKO TO SID CAESAR'S YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS.--SACHA BARON COHEN
IT'S ironic that the Borat and Ali G characters have been accused of being anti-Semitic, considering that Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish. However, contrary to reports that he is devoutly Orthodox, Baron Cohen's identity is more firmly rooted in the secular.
"I wouldn't say I'm a religious Jew," he admits, explaining that his observances have more to do with Jewish cultural customs and traditions. When in England, for example, he'll spend Friday nights with his family and "we'll light the candles. A couple times a year I will go to synagogue." He also tries to keep kosher, not because he's religious, but "because I'm culturally and historically proud of my Jewish identity."
And that heritage he identifies with comes to him from two disparate lineages. Although the individual experiences for each side of his family tree differed, the reality of living with a bull's-eye on their back because of their faith merged into a collective consciousness that has left its indelible markon each subsequent generation, in one fashion or another. For some of his relatives, it fueled the fires of commercial ambition; for Sacha, it informed his desire to expose passive prejudice through biting humor and seek understanding and tolerance through the laughter of recognition.
Whether any of his ancestors would find Borat's running-of-the-Jews scene funny is debatable since there weren't a lot of yucks finding oneself an endangered species. Sacha's mother, Daniella Weiser, was born in Israel, the daughter of a German Jew whose girlhood dream of being a dancer was derailed by Hitler's rise to power.
"The Nazis were incredibly fair," Baron Cohen deadpans, "because they had a rule that any Jew who enrolled [in school] before the Nuremberg laws was allowed to complete their education. Just no Jews afterward were allowed to. So [my grandmother] stayed until 1936 ... and was basically the last Jewish girl taught ballet in Germany."
By that time, Sacha's paternal clan was long gone from the area, having joined the exodus of Jews fleeing the pogroms that had become increasingly common, and increasingly brutal, throughout Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. Sacha's great-grandfather Hyman Baron Cohen was among those who sought refuge in London. Broke and unable to speak English, he took whatever work was available. For immigrant Jews that usually meant a job in one of east London's notorious clothing sweatshops.
But the harsh circumstances became the backdrop for Hyman's courtship of coworker Amelia Angell, who hadalso come to London in search of tolerance and safety. The couple married and decided to make their home in Wales, which had a growing Jewish immigrant population of merchants and would-be entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the influx of laborers from the Continent looking for work in coal mines and factories.
Eventually, anti-Semitism reared its head in Wales, and in August 1911 Jewish businesses in the south Wales coal-mine countryside were attacked by mobs, prompting most of the Jewish immigrants to leave and settle in Cardiff's Jewish ghetto along with five thousand others struggling to survive and somehow integrate into the local citizenry--not an easy task. Being Jewish in Wales is akin to being a snake-handling revival Baptist in Italy--to say you are a minority doesn't remotely begin to describe the cultural isolation Jewish immigrants in Wales faced.
"We were always outsiders," says Baron Cohen's uncle, Sammy Epstein, a retired film distribution manager who still lives in Cardiff. "Sacha is very mindful of his history. He is proud of his Jewish and Welsh roots, even though he once came down here and poked fun at the Welsh in one of his shows."
Hyman and Amelia settled near Cardiff and had fifteen children. Sacha's grandfather Morris, the second oldest of seven brothers, was born in 1900 in Pontypridd, which is also Tom "Panty Magnet" Jones's hometown. Tales of the hardships Morris and his siblings endured have become family lore.
Baron Cohen's cousin Samuel Minton reveals that Morris's family "lived in a hovel in a real ghetto" that had no electricity, no heat, no indoor plumbing, "and appalling hygiene." Food was scarce and hunger was common. Their home was so tiny, all the kids shared one bedroom. Hyman struggled to support his family by working as an all-around fix-it man who repaired everything from glass to pots and pans.
"It was an incredibly hard life," Epstein says. "They peddled services and were paid in installments." There were some suggestions among locals that Morris drummed up extra business by encouraging local youths to go around breaking windows so that he would be hired to repair them. That was the first clue young Morris had a bright future in business ... or as Tony Soprano's director of marketing.
With money so scarce, education was a luxury Morris's family could not afford. When each kid turned fourteen, he or she had to quit school and find a job. "The girls became dressmakers," Epstein says, "while the boys did all sorts of menial work, selling glass and even going down the pits." Morris went to work when he was eleven, earning sixpence a week, or the equivalent of about twelve cents.
When World War I broke out, five of the Baron Cohen boys enlisted. "There was never any question about waiting to be called up," Sammy says. "They all went straightaway to volunteer. They felt one hundred percent British and wanted to fight for Britain."
Most of the Baron Cohen brothers lied about their age so they could be enlisted. Fourteen-year-old Morris--short, slight of build, and nearsighted--claimed to be nineteen and was assigned to the Cardiff City Battalion. He became the youngest non-commissioned British officer and saw combat in France, Germany, and Belgium. Three of his younger brothers also served.
Inordinately confident and mature, Morris went on to become a sergeant. "Well, he was always a noisy beggar," observes Sammy, "and obviously clever, with all his marbles about him."
The eldest Baron Cohen son, Isaac, was wounded at Ypres and died of pneumonia on the last day of the war. Morris took the responsibility of being the oldest living son to heart.
"Although he was only eighteen, Morris was the elderstatesman of the family, always on the go and a real go-getter," Epstein says. "He worked hard, he took menial jobs, anything he could find ... . And he always did it with the most remarkable sense of humor."
For a while Morris followed his dad's lead and worked as a tinker. Being a resourceful young man, Morris frequently subsidized his meager earnings hustling at snooker. But as Europe's economy began the slide that would ultimately domino into the Great Depression, work became scarce in Wales. So Morris periodically traveled to London in hopes of finding a decent-paying job. Instead, he found a high-spirited Cockney maiden named Miriam. The couple married in 1929 and settled in London's Stepney neighborhood, not far from Whitechapel, where Jack the Ripper had roamed forty years earlier.
Miriam and Morris's two sons, Hymie and Gerald, were born in England, but Morris was homesick and moved his family back to Wales. He was hired at a tailor's store where he finally found his niche, turning the job into a thriving family business.
Alan Schwartz, who edited a Welsh Jewish publication called Bimah, recalled in a London Daily Mail interview that Morris "was a decent, strait-laced sort of bloke." Even though business and financial matters were his primary focus, Schwartz says Morris was also "fairly orthodox and observant to the faith and our holidays. He became a pillar of the community and was made the honorary warden of our local synagogue ... . Morris likedto be known as a professional and his wife certainly lived up to it."
Another acquaintance recalls that Miriam was much more outgoing than her husband. "She was hilariously loud and ebullient and you could hear her coming a mile away." As Morris became more prosperous, Miriam nudged her husband to upgrade their lifestyle by moving to a posher neighborhood in Cardiff, "but she still insisted on shopping in the poorer part of town."
While Miriam was out looking for bargains, Morris did a mitzvah by establishing a scholarship for underprivileged children. He also set his sons up with their own tailoring company, called Morris Cowan, with outlets in Cardiff and London. Gerald moved to London in the 1960s.
Although Sacha's maternal grandmother still lived in Haifa, Israel, where she ran--and continues to run--a fitness center for geriatrics, Daniella had moved to London and supported herself as a movement instructor. After their marriage, she and Gerald settled in the well-heeled Hampstead Garden suburb, where they raised three sons.
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen was born on October 13, 1971, and grew up in the family's three-story redbrick house, the youngest child. His father owns the House of Baron clothier, located in always trendy Piccadilly. By all accounts Sacha's was a typical upper-middle-class upbringing--plenty of creature comforts, minimal money worries, and tacit parental expectations of achieving personal success.
As Sacha was growing up, the family consensus was thathe had inherited Grandma Miriam's outgoing humor, served with a splash of vermouth. In 1981, he wrote an essay about school that practically reeks of a precocious sarcasm: "My first lesson on Monday morning is English. This reminds us of the correct way to speak and write English. This is very important as most of the boys have been watching television and speaking with their parents all weekend."
He recounted a history lesson...
