Emil Moses Cohn (1881–1948)

Emil Moses Cohn, who used the pen name Emil Bernhard Cohn, was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. His parents were Caecilie and Bernhard Cohn, a physician and ardent Zionist. His youngest sister Charlotte "Lotte" Cohn became a pioneering Israeli architect. From 1899, he studied at the University of Berlin and the Academy for the Science of Judaism (Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums), and received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1903. While still a student, he co-founded a Zionist student group. In 1906, he was appointed prediger (rabbi and religion teacher) by the Jewish community in Berlin, but resigned under pressure in 1907 because of his Zionist views. In 1907-1908, he studied law at the University of Kiel, and then served as a rabbi in Kiel, Essen, and Bonn. In Essen, Cohn also taught medieval history at the Johanneum and was a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of Bonn. From 1919 to 1921, he also worked on the publication Blatten für Bühnenkunst under editor-in-chief Paul Hankamer. From 1920, he became increasingly well-known as a playwright. He also wrote poetry, ideological essays on Judaism and Zionism, books, and translations from Hebrew into German. He wrote biographies of Zionist leader David Wolffsohn and of the 11th century philosopher and poet Judah Halevi, and translated Halevi's body of work. Cohn married Margarete Kaufmann, with whom he had three children. In 1925, he returned to Berlin, where he served as rabbi in Grunewald. After being arrested several times by the Nazis in the 1930s, he fled with his family to the Netherlands, then in 1939 to the USA. There he received the support of Albert Einstein and Rabbi Stephen Wise, who gave him the post of deputy rabbi of his Free Synagogue in New York City. In 1941, Cohn moved to California. He worked until 1945 as a rabbi in Menlo Park and as a lecturer in Hebrew literature at Stanford University. In 1945, he became rabbi of Temple Sinai in Glendale and lectured on Jewish history at the School of Jewish Studies. From 1947 to 1948, he was librarian of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Council.