One thing, though, was clear: It was Rav Ze’ev’s radiant face and rabbinic dignity that brought that salute again and again

"Be outside my house two minutes after seven,” he would say carefully in his Israeli-inflected English. Grasping my hand warmly at his wooden shtender next to the aron hakodesh at the front of the Gateshead Yeshivah beis hamedrash, he would beam that radiant smile as he added in confirmation, “7:02,” and then I’d turn to go.

On his eleventh yahrtzeit, there are many better qualified than I to write a tribute to Hagaon Harav Ze’ev Cohen ztz”l, for half a century the menahel ruchani of Gateshead Yeshivah. Those tributes could focus on his famed mastery of Shas and Rambam; the mix of oratory, mussar, and stories he picked up in the Yeshivas Chevron of old; or the middos that led him to forgive those who wronged him in the course of a long public career.

But my perspective takes in none of the above. Rather, it’s that of an 18-year-old bochur who had the opportunity to observe a unique encounter. Imprinted in my memory is the image of a talmid chacham whose majesty was unmistakable to the non-Jewish residents of Gateshead.

Exactly when I began to go into “Reb Ze’ev,” as he was known, I don’t remember. The Menahel — a position that was essentially a rosh yeshivah — lived next door to the storied yeshivah on Windermere Street. There were bochurim who used to learn with him, and others who’d go into him during the afternoon seder, officially to discuss their learning, but generally to bask in the warmth of his rich personality.

This, after all, was a world-class figure who’d been shaped by many influences. Although Reb Ze’ev stood at the helm of a litvish yeshivah, his father, Rav Yechiel Fishel Cohen, was a chassidic talmid chacham from Lodz, Poland, and a leading follower of the saintly Ostrovtza Rebbe.

“He was so thin from constant fasting that he had to wear a fur coat in the summer,” Reb Ze’ev would say of the Rebbe.

And then there were his memories of Chevron. He was 15 when he joined in 1942, and the yeshivah had recovered from the massacre to flourish in its Geula location. Rav Chatzkel Sarna and Rav Aharon Cohen were roshei yeshivah, and figures like Rav Aharon Chodosh and the brothers Rav Yitzchak and Rav Boruch Mordechai Ezrachi were close friends.

“I remember once going for a walk on Erev Shabbos, without a jacket,” he said of that period, “and a car stopped. It was the Gerrer Rebbe, the Imrei Emes, and he wanted to talk to the Chevron bochurim. I was struck dumb so that I couldn’t talk.”