Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen said his “remarkably charismatic” mom was sometimes more effective at getting votes than he was.

Joan Berzoff always came down from Massachusetts during election season to help her son on the campaign trail. She was a good representative of his progressive political beliefs, he said — after all, many of them started at home.

Berzoff died last Thursday after a seventh battle with cancer, choosing to end her life through Vermont’s Medical Aid in Dying program. Cohen and his brother, Jake, held her hands as she spoke her last words: “I love you. I’m grateful.”

Though the 76-year-old didn’t live in Baltimore, there are reminders of her influence in the way Cohen debates and communicates, he said. She taught him the importance of social justice and “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew term meaning “healing the world.”

“There’s sort of a core set of values that she instilled around caring for communities that have historically been marginalized, being willing to put yourself on the line and do the right thing, even when it’s politically unpopular,” Cohen said.

Berzoff, born May 4, 1949, spent her early life with her parents and two siblings on Long Island, New York. She was “very smart, very precocious and very mischievous,” Cohen said, pointing to the “Liars Club” she founded with her best friend at age 8. Members had to complete one bad deed every day.

She developed a deep social conscience during her years at Washington University in St. Louis, where she protested the Vietnam War, her son said. She volunteered to register Black voters in Mississippi during the 1964 Freedom Summer.

Berzoff continued her education at Boston University and the Smith College School for Social Work in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she taught for 37 years. She authored four textbooks, including one on psychodynamic theory — the idea that unconscious thoughts and desires influence behavior — and its effects on marginalized communities.

She ran a clinical practice and, in recent years, taught online classes at the University of Chicago. Cohen credits his mother’s lecturing skills for his own speech-writing capabilities.

But Berzoff’s greatest accomplishments were her two children, whom she shared with Lewis, her husband of 47 years. When her sons were young, conversations around the dinner table were filled with debate and dialogue about politics and current events, Cohen said.

Berzoff was especially proud that Cohen overcame learning challenges to succeed in school, become a teacher and get elected in 2016. His brother was a community organizer in Baltimore before becoming executive director of a synagogue in Austin, Texas.

She raised her children with strong Jewish tradition and values, including questioning authority and staying involved in one’s community.

Berzoff became Cohen’s “No. 1 confidante, politically,” and he would call her to discuss election issues or policy disagreements. She was never a great politician herself, mostly because she always found herself in conflict with people in power, but her instincts were spot-on, her son said.

“She always had just a really sharp, perceptive read,” Cohen said.

When she visited her son in Baltimore, Berzoff enjoyed grabbing a coffee before a walk around Patterson Park, catching a show at Center Stage or sitting down for a meal at Charleston.

She also cherished time spent with Cohen’s wife, Reena, and children, Elias and Maya. Berzoff always made it clear to Cohen when she didn’t like one of his girlfriends — but that never happened with Reena.

“I think that part of why both my brother and I married incredible, tremendous women was the example that my mother set,” Cohen said.

Berzoff was a feminist who wanted both a family and a career, and sometimes she felt like she wasn’t doing enough for one or the other.

“But I think she did a tremendous job of balancing those things,” Cohen said. “And I think the lesson that Jake and I took away was: You can have both.”

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