He broke barriers nearly 50 years ago — and last weekend, he took home an honorary degree from the school where it happened:

A legacy of sharing, and even a little daring, was celebrated at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College Saturday, as a Jewish rabbi who once made world news by teaching there returned for an honorary degree.

Dressed in his robes alongside faculty before the ceremonies, Dr. Bernard Cohen bounced with an energy perhaps unexpected in an 80-year-old. But the same rabbi who has officiated ceremonies for Hollywood actors Brad Garett, Henry Winkler, Lisa Kudrow and Suzanne Somers, reminisced excitedly about his days as a professor at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College.

In 1963 he became the first rabbi in the world to teach at a Roman Catholic college, serving there until 1970.

“The living experience of religion,” he said. “That’s the headline for your story, the living experience of religion.”

Dr. David Behrs, president of the college, explained while conferring the honorary degree, that “during this time, a Jewish rabbi teaching at a Roman Catholic college was national news.”

And while in Terre Haute, Cohen also served at the United Hebrew Congregation as well as in a chaplain capacity at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute.

“He truly, truly is a trailblazer in higher education and exemplifies the values we hold dear,” Behrs said.

Before the ceremony, Cohen explained that “ecumenism,” or the efforts to unify faiths, was a novel concept in the early days of the Roman Catholicism’s Second Vatican Council, when walls between religions loomed larger than the doors between them.

Describing the community of St. Mary-of-the-Woods as very “innovative and creative,” he recalled teaching classes on Jewish culture and Hebrew civilization, as well as “Religion in American Life” and “Jewish Life In The New World,” taking students to New York City for an experience in different cultures.

Brotherhood, he said, is not just an annual event, but a daily event.

The result was a lasting relationship between the rabbi born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the small community of Roman Catholics in West Terre Haute.

And 41 years ago, he noted, the bar mitzvah of his son, Seth, also made national news, as an entire choir of Roman Catholic nuns sang in Hebrew for the ceremony.

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