Steve Cozen, Founder and Chairman of Cozen O'Connor, a Philadelphia-based law firm with 24 offices throughout the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, met with representatives of the Jewish Heritage Program and discussed Finding Balance.

Below are some highlights from the interview, followed by the complete text.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE INTERVIEW:
LESSONS FROM MY FATHER: “My father was a great educator, a famous basketball coach, and a mentor to dozens all-Americans and all-Pros. He coached Wilt Chamberlain, won 15 championships, and went to the NCAA several times. He was a real molder of people, of young people, and he liked to come up with these poems that would express his point of view. They were all anonymous. I never knew who wrote them, all I know is he found them. One of them was “There is a destiny that makes us brothers. No one goes his way alone. Whatever we put into the lives of other’s comes back into our own.” That’s a bedrock principle upon which we live ….it’s also a bedrock principle of Judaism…..”

WHAT WE DO VS. WHO WE ARE: "But what we do every day is . . . not who we are, it’s just what we do. Who we are has a deeper meaning: it’s about family, it’s about friends, it’s about community, it’s about synagogue, it’s about the whole picture of what’s important to us in life and what we have decided to be committed to. So never mistake what you do for who you are. They’re two different things. That doesn’t mean what we do isn’t important—it is."

YOU CAN DO IT ALL: "Why can’t I do it all? And the answer is you can. You can. You just have to have the desire to do it. You have to order your life to do it. And sure there is a time when you’re making tough choices. But usually, usually when you sit back and reflect on the choices, they aren’t really that difficult."

MY JEWISHNESS:
"Question: …As I meet with more and more students I come across people who say to me, 'I’m trying to balance everything I have right now. I’m taking such and such courses, etc., and I just don’t have time for Judaism and can’t do it right now.' How would you respond?

Cozen: Well I would say to them that they can’t afford not to. Because your sense of Judaism and of who you are as a Jew is the thing that allows you to do the best that you can do in all these other endeavors. With all this stress on them, they can’t afford not to. It’s not 'can I', it’s 'how am I going to do all of this other stuff if I abandon or ignore my sense of Jewishness?' That’s what gives me the wherewithal. That’s the thing, the engine that drives the train. There is a slight distinction between involvement and commitment you understand. People are sometimes involved or sometimes committed. I like to tell the story of the chicken and the pig who were talking down the street in NYC, and they saw a restaurant sign that said 'Ham and Eggs, 65 cents,' and the chicken said to the pig, 'That’s unbelievable that’s the best deal in town.' And the pig said to the chicken, 'Look, listen, chicken you’re just the contribution, with me its total commitment.'

And it’s true—there are lots of things that we’re involved in and something that we’re really committed to. The commitment means sacrifice. Involvement doesn’t necessarily mean sacrifice. Commitment means sacrifice. At a first level I’ll take involvement but what I’m really shooting for is commitment. I want people who are willing to sacrifice. In fact, that is how I built the firm."

THE FULL TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW:
Steve Cozen: When we talk about balance, we talk about your dedication to your family, your dedication to your friends, your dedication to your community and your larger community, and then your Jewish community, and then Israel. You shouldn’t forget about the history of Jews in America and the contributions that we’ve made to this country, and the fact that we only could have done it here. The National Museum of American Jewish History is already and will be accepted in the country as the jewel of the experience of American Jews.

The Holocaust museum is very special and runs phenomenal programs. It teaches us our history, and it also teaches us to a certain extent the importance of our relationship with Israel. But it doesn’t do a lot, even though I’m a big supporter and fan of it and have three friends on the board of it. They’re actually asking me to do some programming with regard to the holocaust and the wall, very interesting. But it doesn’t transmit to all of us the importance of being Jewish in America and the pride that we should take of being Jewish in America. When you go to the National Museum of American Jewish History you get that in spades — it is extraordinary. It’s at 5th and Market, on the corner, and it is one of the most magnificent architectural feats I’ve ever seen. The exhibits in it are all interactive and nothing short of spectacular. I’ve been on the board for 20 years. It’s a 150 million dollar project: 120 million to build and 30 million in endowment, and we’re there. It’s a pretty impressive place.

I remember when we decided to go ahead and build this new museum because the old one was like a place for artifacts. It was very nice and had the synagogue, Mikvah Israel [attached]. We wanted to go ahead and really build something that is interactive that people could relate to and really told the story of Jews in America, and not just through artifacts tell the story. Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, Jonas Salk, Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand, Irving Berlin, you know I could go on and on and on; there’s a thing that we do with slighted noble prize winners. Jewish Americans--it’s never ending. One of our friends, Gary Erlbaum, said to me, “Why are you doing that? You should be giving all your money to Israel and Federation.” I was on the board of Federation, and I was the Vice Chairman of a synagogue. I said to him, “No, Gary, we don’t make those choices. We should do it all, so don’t tell me about making the choices. I’m asking you why don’t you do it all?” So I did get a good contribution from him, but that’s the thing. We have to think about Jews in this country and why can’t we do it all. You know there is a little saying my father used to like. My father was a great educator, a famous basketball coach, and a mentor to dozens all-Americans and all-Pros. He coached Wilt Chamberlain, won 15 championships, and went to the NCAA several times. He was a real molder of people, of young people, and he liked to come up with these poems that would express his point of view. They were all anonymous. I never knew who wrote them, all I know is he found them. One of them was “There is a destiny that makes us brothers. No one goes his way alone. Whatever we put into the lives of other’s comes back into our own.” That’s a bedrock principle upon which we live (it’s also a bedrock principle of Judaism, right?” So that’s what I try to convey and particularly try to convey to the people who work here at the firm. We just had 650 lawyers and some staff people resort in Florida to have a retreat, and I think they understand that the most important thing that makes this the hottest firm in Philadelphia and the hottest in the East Coast—one of the hottest in the country — is not all the incredible growth and  entrepreneurism that we’ve had over the past couple of years while everyone else sat in troubles. It’s our culture, the culture of meritocracy, of familial feelings toward each other. What I try to instill in them is this culture. And that’s also all about achieving balance in your life.

I think what you’ll learn–it’s a little bit early in life for you to learn this—but I think you’ll learn it as time goes on: that is, you know how important the things are that we do every day. Aren’t they important to us? I mean everyday--whether its classes or whether it’s the work that we do. It has this tremendous importance to us, and it should. We should never do anything without doing it the absolute best that we can. There’s never an excuse for doing less than your best. It doesn’t mean you have to be the best. It just means there’s never an excuse for doing less than your best. But what we do every day is . . . not who we are, it’s just what we do. Who we are has a deeper meaning: it’s about family, it’s about friends, it’s about community, it’s about synagogue, it’s about the whole picture of what’s important to us in life and what we have decided to be committed to.

So never mistake what you do for who you are. They’re two different things. That doesn’t mean what we do isn’t important—it is. I remember talking to a friend of mine who is a very, very famous person in the city who went on this very strange kind of retreat with a group, and he had been through all of these self-awakening kind of things . . . Whatever it is, you go find yourself. I never had a problem with finding myself I always knew who I was. But a lot of people had a problem finding themselves. So they went and did all of this self awareness stuff. And this guy, hugely successful guy, was telling me he went to this kind of follow up program . . . and it winds up there are 2 or 3 guys and about 12 women. He’s telling me about some of the exercises they went through, how they sat on the floor together and talked about what was important in their lives. I said, “well what did you do, what did you learn?” He said, “what I learned is that ‘what we do everyday is just a game we play’. We want to be good at it, actually we want to be best at it, but it’s just a game we play. But what they [the women] do—particularly the women who weren’t working in the work-world but were taking care of their families—is the really important stuff in life. Because they are dealing with the things that are the most important things in the world to us: our kids, our grandchildren, our families, our friends. So what you do is not who you are. Who you are is a much bigger picture than that.

Jon Gitman: So how would you say you managed to balance that out?

Cozen: Well, through the influence of an incredible wife and a spectacular family, I’ve always been a believer that you can do it all. I’ve never felt constrained by the notion that I have to have a priorities list and I say to myself, well if I’m on the board of the Shoah Foundation and I have to go to CA for meetings at USC and help Steven expand the Shoah Foundation Institute from, you know, the one in a lifetime kind of archives we have that no one will ever be able to reproduce (where we can tell visual history of what happened in the holocaust and how people were affected by it), then we can teach the lessons of the patrons of bigotry and the suffering. But now were doing it in Rwanda. So people say to me, “Well you can’t be on that board and also the Board of the National Museum of American Jewish History and also on the Board of the National Constitution Center, and by the way, what about the Federation of Jewish Agencies, and practice law, and have Shabbat dinner ever Friday night with your family, and do all the things that you do in Jewish  community, and then you know spend a lot of time with people in government both at the state level and the federal level and go back and  forth to Washington and NY.

Why can’t I do it all? And the answer is you can. You can. You just have to have the desire to do it. You have to order your life to do it. And sure there is a time when you’re making tough choices. But usually, usually when you sit back and reflect on the choices, they aren’t really that difficult. You know there are lots of good causes, people ask you, especially they ask me, “Well we’d like you to be involved in this, we’d like you to be involved in that.” And you have to say to yourself okay, well if I do that, what does it take away from. And, does it go to my core mission. What’s my core mission in life? I’m on the board of the law school. Law school is very, very, very important. There is a chair at the law school in my name and I want the law school to succeed. I’m a realist, there are only so many hours in a day, and the most important hours I have are for my wife kids and grandchildren, but you learn to do it all. Especially today when everybody can multitask. I’m not saying everybody should be as crazy as I am. What I’m saying is that people should open themselves up to saying, “As I go through life I need to pick and chose those things that are going to make me happy and that I think I can make a contribution to something bigger than final self.” Whether its one thing, two things, five things, whatever it is you have to make those choices. And once you make those choices, you have to go forward.

Starting a practice and having young children at home vs. finding balance at this stage in life I did the same thing between when I started the firm actually in 1968 (officially in 1970- 71) and between 1976 and 1980. I actually was engaged in trials 36 out of 52 weeks a year during that period of time I led two President’s missions to Israel, I was always involved with the synagogue, I built the firm bigger than it was. At the beginning of the seventies we had 3 people, then 5 people, then 7 people. In 1981, we had 23. In 1991 we had a couple hundred. But I tried those cases. I traveled 100,000 miles by airplane. I chaired the two important committees, the two insurance organizations because they were my clients, and I did the other stuff—took my wife and my kids away. So it’s no change. It’s no change. If anything, I would say I probably do more today than I did then only because I can. Because while I still spend a lot of time practicing law there are a lot of other things I’m doing in a lot of different areas, particularly in community and government that I didn’t have the time to do back then. But it’s the same deal, it’s the same deal now. I’m not saying everybody should do that. All I’m saying is every one should open them selves up to those possibilities that I can actually do all the things in life that are going to make me have a good life, a satisfying life, and a Jewish life. For me it was kind of easy because all the things I had always been taught about—the importance of being Jewish and Jewish traditions and values and Jewish morals were the same things I was using in the practice of law. There really wasn’t a dichotomy there. I didn’t have to choose between all the things I needed to practice law successfully and all the things I needed to lead a good Jewish life. They were the same. Same principles. You’re going to find people are going to tell you, particularly after the demographic that we did at Federation this year, which is kind of scary . . . [that] even though we’ve got an increased Jewish population, we have fewer practicing Jews, and that’s a little bit scary. But I still consider one of my biggest obligations in life to be raising Jews, I really do. I really think that’s one of my biggest obligations in life to  raise Jews, but I also believe that far more scary than having assimilation and intermarriage and perhaps losing young Jewish people to a life were Judaism isn’t important—far more scary than that is to lose a sense of who we are and to lose Jewish values.

. . . Those kinds of things don’t really bother me that much. I don’t care about making dinner. Simple things like that don’t bother me so much. I’m more concerned, well, there’s a different dynamic when you have children. Then you have to think to yourself, ok, I need to be there for my kids. It’s not just going to be my wife’s responsibility. One of the brilliant young men that works for me, he’s a lawyer his wives a lawyer. They just had twins and they had two other kids before that. I think there’s a little stress involved! But, they seem to accept it as “that’s just the way it is.” That’s just the way life is today. Just like I accepted in my day that life was different. But that doesn’t change my point of view that you can do it all. The secret is finding the balance. But you can do it all. You know you may have to put some things on the back burner and do other things first because they have a higher priority but that doesn’t mean you abandon stuff that’s on the back burner. It just means that you temporarily put it aside, but you’re coming back to it. So I think you can do it all.

Paul Markowich: You touched on Shabbat dinners, have you always held a Shabbat dinner?

Cozen: Yeah, when the kids were really young. My kids were really young. They are all older than you guys now. We used to have Shabbat dinners, and then as they started to grow older we really started not having Shabbat dinners. And then, when the girls got married, [they and] at least two of my son’s-in-laws said to me, “you know dad, we should really all get together on Shabbat it’s really important.” And it is absolutely. So we just don’t even accept anything on a Friday night. Friday night is for Shabbat, it’s usually at our house. It could be at my son-in- law’s parents’ house, one of my kids’ houses, but usually my house. And it’s phenomenal. It’s not only an opportunity to observe the Sabbath and light the candles, say Kiddush, and sing vayahulu, it’s a tremendous opportunity. I am lucky I have three kids that live within 15 minutes of me, so I have 7 grandchildren who are like brothers and sisters. 6 out of 7 go to the same school. Perelman Jewish Day School then to Friends Central. One is at Bala Cynwyd. But they are all like brothers and sisters they are with each other all the time. And it’s great on Shabbat to be able to sit down and go around the table and everybody says what was the best thing and the worst thing that happened to you this week. And then everybody can join in the discussion and we just get a lot of enjoyment out of that because they all feed off each other. I think no matter what age you are there’s no better feeling in the world than to know that you are loved and appreciated. You get that with family, and there’s no better place to get that than at Shabbat dinner.

Melissa Kaplan: I agree with you about doing everything you possibly can do, and I have about 27 interns . . . and as I meet with more and more students I come across people who say to me, “I’m trying to balance everything I have right now. I’m taking such and such courses, etc., and I just don’t have time for Judaism and can’t do it right now. I’m just curious how would you respond to someone if that was the response given?

Cozen: Well I would say to them that they can’t afford not to. Because your sense of Judaism and of who you are as a Jew is the thing that allows you to do the best that you can do in all these other endeavors. With all this stress on them, they can’t afford not to. It’s not “can I”, it’s “how am I going to do all of this other stuff if I abandon or ignore my sense of Jewishness?” That’s what gives me the wherewithal. That’s the thing, the engine that drives the train. There is a slight distinction between involvement and commitment you understand. People are sometimes involved or sometimes committed. I like to tell the story of the chicken and the pig who were talking down the street in NYC, and they saw a restaurant sign that said “Ham and Eggs, 65 cents,” and the chicken said to the pig, “that’s unbelievable that’s the best deal in town.” And the pig said to the chicken, “Look, listen, chicken you’re just the contribution, with me its total commitment.” And it’s true—there are lots of things that we’re involved in and something that we’re really committed to. The commitment means sacrifice. Involvement doesn’t necessarily mean sacrifice. Commitment means sacrifice. At a first level I’ll take involvement but what I’m really shooting for is commitment. I want people who are willing to sacrifice. In fact, that is how I built the firm. For instance I had a deal with Ed Rendell going back 35 years that I would support him for DA if he would promise me that all the really good DA’s that came out of his office, the first place that they would come to practice law was Cozen and O’Connor. So that was our deal.

Rabbi Menachem Schmidt: So how did you get that?

Cozen: Well he wanted my support. He encouraged them all to come here. And he takes credit for them all to build the firm.

Menachem: He takes credit for a lot of things. [laughter]

Cozen: Yea, and a lot of which he deserves. And David too, for absolutely sure. But the fact ofthe matter is that when those people used to come here, or come to interview here, I would say to them, “How much money were you making at the DA’s office?” And they’d tell me. I’d say to them, “how much money are your friends who are practicing law and your age, your group, how much money are they making?” And they’d tell me that. And I’d say, “Well you’d make more money than you’d make at the DA’s office, but you’re not going to make more money than any of your friends. Not now. You’re going to come in because you really believe that this is the right place to be and that there’s a great future for you here. If you show me what I think you can show me, within a year’s time you’ll be making so much more than your friends, it won’t make a difference.” Now the reason I did that was because I wanted people that I knew were going to be committed from the very beginning. I wanted them to have skin in the game I wanted them to say this is where I really, really, really want to be.

Melissa: Well, then don’t you think there’s some overlap. I mean you said what you do is not who you are, but then there would be values of commitment. If you were a certain type of person, they can go hand in hand.

Cozen: They can go hand in hand, but what I mean when I say, “What you do is not who you are,” is what you do on an everyday basis to make a living is not who you are. Who you are is a much bigger picture than what you do. Listen I’m proud of the fact that at some great sacrifice I spent yesterday afternoon at one of our appellate courts arguing a big case for Aramark. And this morning arguing another big case for another major client of the firm. I love doing that. It requires a lot of sacrifices to be able to take the time to prepare the way I prepare for that kind of stuff. But that’s what I do. It’s still not who I am.