104 years old and still a kid at heart

Apparently, the secret to living until you are 104 is eating yoghurt and scrambled eggs with thick toast every day. 

This is what Golden Acres resident Hadassah Kobrin, who turned 104 on 7 May, does. However, when asked how she’s managed to live this long, all she says is, “Ask Hashem, not me.” 

Her son Trevor says, “It’s extraordinary. It doesn’t seem real. I have somebody in my family who’s just turned 104. Those numbers were numbers that we made jokes about.” 

Born on 7 May 1922 in the Strand in Cape Town, the second youngest of six daughters, Kobrin has fond memories of her childhood and wishes she could go back to the Strand today. She attended Hottentots-Holland High School and then tried her hand at shorthand and typing. But she gave that up because she couldn’t read back what she had written in shorthand. So, she went to work with her father, the Strand’s baker. 

As a teenager, she had dreamed of becoming an opera singer. Her father dissuaded her from pursuing that as a career because he believed it wasn’t a profession. Kobrin, however, never stopped singing and Trevor vouched for that, saying, “I grew up listening to singing in the bath.” 

His mother married his father, Basil Kobrin, and moved to Benoni, where they ran the Van Riebeeck Hotel. She continued running it until she retired in 1992, thoroughly enjoying her work because, she says, “I loved meeting and seeing all these new people, something I don’t get to do much of now.” 

Her children are the pride of her life. Other than Trevor, a photographer who lives in Dallas, Texas, there is Gillian Kaplan, who lives in Australia, and Sue Rosen, who lives in Johannesburg. Her late son, Raymond, was murdered in 1991. 

“They were good children. Who am I to judge? But they were kind and that was very important,” Kobrin says. 

She doesn’t miss a moment to gush about her children, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, whom she refuses to count. This is because, as Trevor explains, to her, family is the most important thing. 

Kobrin says that before she became wheelchair-bound after a fall, she loved to travel, and spent many years going to places such as the Seychelles and Switzerland. She would also often visit her daughter in Australia, even in her 80s. 

“Can I remember all the lovely places I’ve been to? No, but I remember that I loved doing it,” she says. 

After she retired, she also spent some time as a volunteer teaching children how to speak English. 

“I’m not a teacher, but I taught the little ones to speak English. And I would say, ‘This is your nose, and this is your mouth.’ They just loved me. If only I could find the letters I got for the kindness that I’d given to them,” she says. 

Kobrin says she’s still a child at heart. “Being 104 years old doesn’t feel that different to when I was just 10 years old. I’ve got very young ideas.” 

Says Trevor, “There’ve been good things and bad things in her life, but she has this amazing positive attitude about everything. When the worst of a situation comes about, she always just looks on the bright side.”