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With kavod (honor) to “all whose hearts were stirred to share” (kol asher nasa libam, cf. Exodus 36:2-3), this is a searchable index of all liturgists, translators, transcribers, etc. whose work on Jewish prayer, on prayer books, and on public readings is being shared through the Open Siddur Project. After ten years, the total number of project contributors is nearly 800. A little over half have shared their work either directly with the project with an Open Content license, or indirectly by contributing their work into the Public Domain as a contributor to a government publication. Nearly fifty are institutional copyright stewards (operating or defunct for-profit and non-profit entities). The remaining contributors have had their works transcribed from material that has passed into the Public Domain after their deaths. Some transcribed works shared through the Open Siddur project remain unattributed due to unknown authorship. If you find an uncredited or improperly attributed work, please contact us.
To join this community of contributors, please share your work. Making prayers and related religious works available for creative reuse and republication through Open Content licenses is crucial for keeping Jewish culture cross-pollinating, vital, and relevant under the current climate of denominationally identified silos and proprietary-by-default copyright strictures. Prospective contributors should read our Mission Statement, Terms of Use, and Copyleft Policy. The Open Siddur is a non-prescriptive, non-denominational project and invites participation without prejudice towards ethnic heritage, skin color, nationality, belief or non-belief, sex, gender, sexuality or any other consideration.
Rabbi Leonard Cahan (1934-2018), originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the rabbi and then rabbi emeritus of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Maryland. Ordained at JTS, he held pulpits in Detroit, Michigan, and Oakland, California. He was a Navy Chaplain from 1961-1990 and served in Quantico, Virginia and Japan, and retired as the rank of Commander. Rabbi Cahan also served on the Jewish Welfare Board from sometime in the ‘70s until 2016. In the early 1990s, he undertook a complete overhaul of Rabbi Jules Harlow's Sim Shalom (Rabbinical Assembly 1985), separating it into Shabbat & Weekday volumes, which went to press in 1998. He also contributed substantially to reworking the 2014 JWB siddur into the edition published in 2017.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Rabbah Gila Caine graduated from the Hebrew University with an MA in Contemporary Judaism and received her rabbinic ordination at the HUC-JIR’s Israeli program in 2011. She now serves as rabbi at Temple Beth Ora congregation in Edmonton, Alberta, where she lives with her husband, children and two cats.
Rabbi Edward Nathan Calisch (1865 – 1946), born in Toledo, Ohio, was a Reform movement rabbi in the United States. He studied at the University of Cincinnati and was ordained after graduating from Hebrew Union College. After accepting a pulpit in Peoria, Illinois in 1887, he came in 1891, to Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia. In 1908, Calisch earned a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. In 1915 Calisch gave a speech in support of women's suffrage from the steps of the state capitol. He was an executive member of the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Joint Distribution Committee and the Virginia War History Commission.
Joshua Calvo’s research and teaching interests include Arabic and Hebrew language and literature, modern and classical; Sephardic and Arab Jewish history and culture; Ladino and Judeo-Arabic; the experimental novel; literary translation; and creative writing. In 2019–20 he held a fellowship position at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, American University of Cairo. He is the author of “The Ruins,” in Youssef Rakha’s sultanseal.com, a repository of essays, fiction, poetry, translations, reviews, and photography (2019, with additional essays forthcoming). Publications also include translations of Seliman Menahem Mani’s “The Valley of Demons” (1884) in Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7, 1880-1918, forthcoming; four prose poems by Mahmoud Darwish for A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry (Smokestack Books, 2017). In addition to Hebrew and Arabic (near fluent), his languages include French, Spanish, Ladino, Ugaritic, Finnish (reading), and elementary Japanese, Quechua, and Hungarian.
Cantors Assembly (CA) is the international association of ḥazzanim (cantors) affiliated with Conservative Judaism. Cantors Assembly was founded in 1947 to develop the profession of the ḥazzan, to foster the fellowship and welfare of ḥazzanim, and to establish a conservatory for ḥazzanim. The latter goal was realized in 1952 with the establishment of the Cantors Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This Institute later developed into the H. L. Miller Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Debra Cash is an award-winning writer and cultural worker whose liturgical work has been anthologized in Anita Diamant's popular books on weddings and mourning, in siddurim of the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, and has been included in life cycle ceremonies from Boston to Tasmania. Her first book, Who Knows One (Hand Over Hand Press, 2010) is available on demand from Blurb. Her second, The Bumblebee's Diwan, is in progress.
René Samuel Cassin (5 October 1887 – 20 February 1976) was a French jurist known for co-authoring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in Bayonne to a Sephardi Jewish family, he grew up in Nice, where he attended the Lycée Masséna, and graduated with a bachelor's degree at 17. He matriculated at the University of Aix, studying political economics, constitutional history, and Roman law, and awarded distinctions in law, and a university degree with distinction, and a first prize in the competitive examinations in the faculty of law. In 1914 in Paris, he was awarded his doctorate in juridical science, economics, and politics. Cassin served in World War I in 1916 at the Battle of the Meuse. In one operation he led an attack on enemy positions but was gravely injured in the arm, side, and stomach by machine gun fire. A medic saved his life, but he only received surgical treatment ten days later at Antibes. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his actions, but was too gravely injured to return to active duty, and was mustered out as a war invalid. He formed the Union Fédérale, a leftist, pacifist organization for veterans and founded the French Federation of Disabled War Veterans in 1918 and until 1940 serving as its president and then honorary president. As French delegate to the League of Nations from 1924 to 1938, Cassin pressed for progress on disarmament and in developing institutions to aid the resolution of international conflicts. In April 1941, Cassin made a radio broadcast from London, addressing himself especially to French Jews from a secular viewpoint and reminding them of the full and equal protection France had always offered Jews since the Revolution. He exhorted them to pay back that debt in part by joining the forces of Free France. In May, the Vichy Regime stripped Cassin of his French citizenship, and in 1942 sentenced him to death in absentia. In 1945, Charles de Gaulle suggested Cassin, having done so much for the French people, also do something to help the Jewish people. Cassin became the president of the French-Jewish Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) which had previously been primarily dedicated to educating Sephardi Jews living under the rule of the Ottoman Empire according to a French modernist curriculum. As president of the AIU, Cassin worked with the American Jewish Committee and the Anglo-Jewish Association, to found the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations, a network dedicated to building support for Cassin's platform of human rights from a Jewish perspective while the UN human rights system was in its early stages of development. Following World War Two, Cassin was assigned to the United Nations, helping to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Working from a list of rights elaborated by Canadian scholar and professor of law John Humphrey, Cassin produced a revised draft and expanded the text. He served on the UN's Human Rights Commission and the Hague Court of Arbitration. He was also a member (1959–1965) and president (1965–1968) of the European Court of Human Rights.
Daniel J. Cayre is a founder of Kanisse: a Modern Sephardic + Mizrahi Community.
Daniel G. Cedarbaum (d. 2 July 2021) was the Executive Director and President of The Mordecai M. Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood. Dan became the Director of Movement Growth Initiatives and Special Projects of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF) in September 2008, having previously served for almost 20 years as a member of JRF’s Board of Directors. He was also the JRF’s Acting Director of Individual Giving and staffed the JRF’s Chicago-area office. Dan worked professionally for the JRF through November 2010, when he left to start the Kaplan Center, together with Mel Scult, Eric Caplan and Jack Wolofsky. From 2002-2006, Dan was the President of the JRF, and a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In addition, Dan has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and as a member of the Executive Committee and the Board of Trustees of the United Jewish Communities. Dan has also been a member of the Board of Directors of the National Council of Synagogues, which is perhaps the leading national Jewish organization working in the area of interfaith dialogue and programming.
CenozoicSynapsid is the pen name of a pseudonymous author on Archive of Our Own, a site for sharing fan-fiction.
The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada.
Sarah Shamirah Chandler is the CCO (Chief Compassion Officer) and team leader at the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA) where she works to support Jewish institutions to establish meaningful food policies rooted in Jewish ethics and animal welfare. Sarah holds a M.A. in Jewish Education and a M.A. in Hebrew Bible from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a certificate in Non-Profit Management and Jewish Communal Leadership from Columbia University. She recently served as the Director of Earth Based Spiritual Practice for Hazon’s Adamah Farm and teaches, writes and consults on a national level on issues related to Judaism, the environment, mindfulness, food values, and farming.
Peng Chun Chang, commonly known as P. C. Chang (simplified Chinese: 张彭春; traditional Chinese: 張彭春; pinyin: Zhāng Péngchūn; Wade–Giles: Chang1 P'eng2-ch'un1; 1892–1957), was a Chinese academic, philosopher, playwright, human rights activist, and diplomat. On the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafting committee, he served both as an effective Asian delegate and also as a mediator when the negotiations reached a stalemate. He served as Vice-Chairman of the original UN Commission on Human Rights and Republic of China delegate to committee and played a pivotal role in its drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948. He was born in Tianjin, China, and died at his home in Nutley, New Jersey.
אברהם היימאן חרלאפ, Abraham Hyman (Ḥayyim) Charlap (1862-1916) was a Jewish writer, scholar, educator, and translator active in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Near the end of his life, he arranged new siddurim, the Sidur Tifʼeret Yehudah (1912) and Siddur Sfath Emeth Hechodosh (1916), collaborated on a scholarly dictionary with Alexander Harkavy (1911, 1914), translated the Tanakh into Yiddish with Simon Avseyewitz Neuhausen and Meir Letteris (1912), and created educational resources for younger students with Jakob Phillips (1911). After he died, his name was remembered for a blessing in haggadot, siddurim, and other works published posthumously by the Hebrew Publishing Company.
Robert Henry (R. H.) Charles, FBA (Cookstown, 6 August 1855–Westminster, 1931) was an Irish Anglican theologian, biblical scholar, professor, and translator from Northern Ireland. He is known particularly for his English translations of numerous apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works and editions, including the Book of Jubilees (1895), the Apocalypse of Baruch (1896), the Ascension of Isaiah (1900), the Book of Enoch (1906), and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908), which have been widely used. He wrote the articles in the eleventh edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) attributed to the initials "R. H. C." He was born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, on 6 August 1855 and educated at the Belfast Academy, Queen's College, Belfast, and Trinity College, Dublin, with periods in Imperial Germany and Switzerland. He gained a D.D. and became Professor of Biblical Greek at the Trinity College. In 1906, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and four years later he was appointed Fellow of the Merton College, Oxford. He also became Archdeacon of Westminster in 1919, serving until his death in 1931. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Jacob Chatinover is a Jewish environmental educator. He studied Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, where he focused on translation, especially poetic and liturgical translation. He is pursuing rabbinic ordination at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.If you know of a work that is beautiful but inaccessible to English-speakers, let him know!
Lara is a data analyst for the federal government
Yuval Cherlow (born 1957) is a Modern Orthodox rabbi and posek. He is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hesder Amit Orot Shaul in Kfar Batya, Raanana, Israel. Cherlow was one of the founders of Tzohar, an organization of religious Zionist Orthodox rabbis in Israel.
Rabbi Gershon Baruch Chertoff (1915-1996) was a Conservative movement rabbi in the United States. He was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and received a doctoral degree in philosophy and anthropology from Columbia University. During World War II, he served as an Army chaplain. In 1946, he came to Temple B’nai Israel (Elizabeth, New Jersey). After urban rioting erupted across the United States in the late 1960s, Rabbi Chertoff was named by President Lyndon Johnson to chair an advisory panel studying housing discrimination in New Jersey. Coming in the aftermath of the 1967 Newark riots, hearings by the New Jersey Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission received widespread attention and Chertoff continued in the position for many years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was named by the state Supreme Court as a non-attorney member of the Disciplinary Review Board, which hears appeals to attorney disciplinary actions.
Rabbi Abraham Chill (March 30, 1912 – April 20, 2004), born in New York, was an Orthodox rabbi in the United States and the first rabbi at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. He attended Yeshiva University and the City College of New York. In 1935, he received his rabbinic ordination from Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in Jerusalem and from the Lomza Yeshiva in Petach Tikvah, Israel. In 1941, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Army. In 1945, after holding pre-war pulpits in Newburgh, New York, and Nashville, Tennessee, he became rabbi of Congregation Sons of Abraham in Providence, Rhode Island, a position he held until his retirement in 1969. In 1946, he was National Chaplain of the Jewish War Veterans of the US, as well as National Chaplain of the American Legion in 1948. He was an active member of the Rabbinical Council of America, serving as president of the North-Eastern Region, and later as national secretary of the Council. He was also a 32nd Degree Mason and a Shriner. Rabbi Chill authored The Mitzvot: The Commandments and Their Rationale (1974), The Minahagim: the customs and ceremonies of Judaism, their origins and rationale (1979), The Sidrot: Insights into the Weekly Torah Reading (1983), and Abarbanel on Pirke Avot (1991).
Rabbi Yehonatan Chipman is a Jerusalem-based translator and scholar of Jewish texts who has for years been writing a weekly commentary on the Torah portion published on his blog, Hitzei Yehonatan. He is a contributor to the book, Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections (2013). In 2000, Rabbi Chipman gave smiḥa to Rabbi Evelyn Goodman-Thau, the first female rabbi of Austria.
Daniel Chorny is a rabbi and Jewish educator at Louis B. Silver Religious School in Pasadena, California. In 2014, he was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Rabbi Cantor Hillary Chorny completed her cantorial investiture, rabbinical ordination, and a Masterʼs degree in Sacred Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary before joining the staff of Temple Beth Am in August, 2014. Raised in San Diego, CA, she grew up with a deep attachment to the Conservative Jewish community. In 2008, Hillary graduated American University in Washington, D.C. with a B.A. in Jewish studies and a minor in vocal jazz performance. After working as a Judaics instructor and music director in various Jewish communities and camps, Hillary pursued her dream of becoming a cantor. In time, she was inspired by her teachers and family to also pursue the rabbinate. She and her husband, Rabbi Daniel Chorny, met in Israel, and continue to enjoy learning together.
Founded by Rabbi Emily Aronson in February 2022, Chronic Congregation provides community for Jews with chronic illness and/or disability; raises awareness of and reframes how Judaism has traditionally discussed disability and illness; offers new prayers and rituals that reflect the lived experience of disabled and chronically ill Jews.
Alex Cicelsky is a researcher and educator in energy efficient construction, natural materials in buildings and sustainable solutions for shelter, food, energy, water and waste at the Center for Creative Ecology, Israel.
Rabbi Alfred Cohen, maggid shiur at MTA, received semikhah from Rabbi Yisrael Gustman and from Rabbi Hutner of Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin and served for many years as the mora d'asra (leader of the congregation) of the Young Israel of Canarsie.
Aryeh Cohen is a professor, a social justice activist, a rabbi, and a lecturer. He teaches all things Rabbinic Literature (Mishnah, Talmud, midrash) and social justice at the Ziegler School for Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University. Prof. Cohen is a founder and member of the Shtibl Minyan, a former chair of the Boards of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and CLUE. He is the co-convener of the Black Jewish Justice Alliance and is the author of Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism (2012).
Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen is Senior Director of the New Israel Fund’s New York/Tri-State Region. Previously, she was Director of The Center for Jewish Living and The David H. Sonabend Center for Israel at The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. She served for 10 years at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue serving people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Passionately committed to progressive and feminist Judaism, she is an activist and an advocate for full inclusion and celebration of LGBT Jews in the Jewish world, and an advocate for LGBT civil rights. Rabbi Cohen has been profiled in the New York Times, was named one of the “Heeb 100,” Heeb Magazine’s “hundred people you need to know about,” and was honored at the 2005 Ma’yan Seder as a leading young Jewish feminist activist. She is a member of the Rabbinical Assembly and the New York Board of Rabbis.
Danny graduated from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began to connect with peers confused about their true direction and disconnected from the inner compass of their emotional and spiritual lives. He realized a calling in meeting people in their place of searching, struggling, and reckoning, helping them find their way to a life of radiance, soulfulness, emotional balance, and relational intimacy. In the years hence, he made it his life's work to walk that path and know it well, finding his own way from depression to a life of heartful presence and well-being, and leading to an exploration of a wide range of fields and intensive meditation and spiritual practice. In addition, Danny pursued study of Torah and wisdom in a variety of yeshivot and institutions in Israel, the U.S., India, Nepal, and Mexico, as well as through the modem worlds of psychology/psychotherapy and transformative change work, and grounded in daily practice of meditation, prayer, and regular intensive retreat. The founding director of Or HaLev Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation, Danny now devotes himself to teaching, a role he is delighted and privileged to fulfill. He is profoundly grateful to live a life colored by deep listening, heartfulness, cunosity, humor, and love of people. He teaches meditation, NVC, and works one-on-one with people seeking healing and transformation.
Rabbi Dovid M. Cohen is the Director of Community Engagement, Strategy and Development for YACHAD, a flagship program of the Orthodox Union (OU) dedicated to addressing the needs of Jewish individuals with disabilities and ensuring their inclusion in every aspect of Jewish life. He is also the Rabbi of Congregation Ohr Torah in North Woodmere, NY. Rabbi Cohen is a Dayan for the Beis Din of America. He maintains a private counseling practice guiding people with relationship issues. He previously served as the Rabbi of the Young Israel of the West Side from 2006 until 2015. He spent five years in Fair Lawn, NJ as assistant to Rabbi Benjamin Yudin at Shomrei Torah. Rabbi Cohen served a Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva University and Stern College for Women and also directed the Honors Program at the Lander College for Women. Rabbi Cohen received his BA from Yeshiva University in 1994, graduating with honors in History. He was ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanon Theological Seminary (RIETS) in 1997 and obtained a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1999 and a Masters in counseling from University of North Texas in 2007.
Emmy Cohen studies Religion at American University and is interested in women's roles in religion.
Emmy grapples with defining the word "holy."
Julia Matilda Cohen née Waley (1853-1917) compiled a prayerbook for families and children, The children's Psalm-book, a selection of Psalms with explanatory comments, together with a prayer-book for home use in Jewish families (1907). Her father, Jacob Waley (1818-1873), was a co-founder of the United Synagogue. If you know any more about Julia M. Cohen, please contact us.
Martin Samuel Cohen was born and raised in New York City, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude from the City University of New York and where he was ordained as rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1978. In addition to his ordination, Rabbi Cohen earned a Ph.D. in the history of ancient Judaism from JTS, which degree was awarded to him in 1982. The recipient of post-doctoral fellowships at the Hebrew University in 1983 and at Harvard University in 1993, Rabbi Cohen has also lectured on the history of religion at Hunter College of the City University of New York and taught Bible and Talmud both at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and at the Institute for Jewish Studies attached to the University of Heidelberg in Germany. In 1986, Rabbi Cohen left Europe for Canada, where he accepted the pulpit of the Beth Tikvah Congregation in Richmond, British Columbia. In 1999, he left Canada to assume the pulpit of Congregation Eilat in Mission Viejo, California, the position he left in 2002 to become the rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York, where he has now completed thirteen years of service. In addition to his work as teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Cohen is an author and has published two scientific studies in the history of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism, four novels and four books of essays, including the Hebrew-language Sefer Ha‘ikarim Livnei Zemanenu, as well as his own 2004 edition of the Book of Psalms, called Our Haven and our Strength: The Book of Psalms in New Translation. More recently, Rabbi Cohen has published the two-volume prayer book Siddur Tzur Yisrael, Zot Nechemati for the house of mourning, a children’s book called Riding the River of Peace, and The Boy on the Door on the Ox, an exploration of the relationship between Torah study and service in the congregational rabbinate. From 1997 to 2000, he served as chairman of the Publications Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly and has for the last dozen years chaired the editorial board of the quarterly journal, Conservative Judaism. Most recently, Rabbi Cohen served as senior editor of the 2012 landmark volume defining Conservative Jewish life, The Observant Life: The Wisdom of Conservative Judaism for Contemporary Jews, and is currently at work on his own Torah translation and commentary.
A writer and educator, Tamara Cohen served as program director of Ma’yan for many years and edited their feminist haggadah, The Journey Continues. She also collaborated with the Jewish Women’s Archive to create the first Women of Valor posters, and created a women’s Omer calendar in conjunction with the women’s studies department at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Through Project Kesher, she worked as an educator with women in the former Soviet Union. She is a cofounder of Jewish Activist Gays and Lesbians and serves as the director of multicultural and diversity affairs at the University of Florida.
Edward Paul Cohn was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1948. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the University of Cincinnati in 1970, his Master of Hebrew letters degree from Hebrew Union College-Jewish of Religion in 1974, and his Doctor of Ministry degree from the St. Paul School of Theology in 1984. From 1974 to 1976, Cohn was the Assistant Rabbi at The Temple, in Atlanta, Georgia. He served as the Rabbi of Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia from 1976 to 1979, and of the New Reform Temple in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1979 to 1983. Before his selection as Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai in New Orleans in 1987, Cohn was Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is past president of the Southwest Association of Reform Rabbis. He was appointed by the Mayor of New Orleans to chair the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial Project. He also served as founding chairman of the City Human Relations Committee and is an active leader in the Jewish and larger communities of the New Orleans metropolitan region. From 2005-2007, Cohn served as ethics consultant for MSNBC and appeared on “The Ethical Edge.” Cohn was named contributing editor of the prestigious national journal of preaching, Pulpit Digest, and was asked to serve on the Union for Reform Judaism Congregation Committee on the Family. He was appointed to the Joint Commission on Interfaith Relations sponsored by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Men of Reform Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism. He is past president of the Rabbinical Council of Greater New Orleans and has served as adjunct professor at Dillard University. Cohn currently serves on the Board of Visitors of Xavier University.
Avraham Hakohen Cohn — Romi was a nickname he adopted in America, and he was usually called Rabbi Cohn — was born in Pressburg, now known as Bratislava, the capital of what is now Slovakia, on March 10, 1929. He was one of seven children. When the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia and deported Jews to concentration camps, his family managed to spirit him across the border to Hungary. His mother, two brothers and two sisters perished in the camps. He studied at a Hasidic yeshiva until 1944, when the Germans occupied Hungary and deported tens of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz. He managed to slip back into Czechoslovakia and joined up with a partisan brigade battling the retreating Germans. With the German defeat, Mr. Cohn rejoined his father and two sisters in Pressburg. After the war, Mr. Cohn made his way to the United States and became wealthy developing thousands of single-family homes on Staten Island. He also turned himself into an expert mohel, performing thousands of circumcisions and writing scholarly articles. He even set up an operating theater in his Staten Island home to circumcise adult Russian Jews who had not been able to undergo the ritual as infants because of Soviet strictures. He described his wartime experiences in an autobiography, The Youngest Partisan published in 2001. (via his obituary in the New York Times)
Yehudah Cohn completed a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2007, and also has an MA from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Originally from London, where he had studied Statistics & Computer Science at University College London and Business Administration at the London Business School, Dr. Cohn had a career as a commodities trader in New York prior to beginning doctoral research. The subject of his dissertation was the early development of Jewish ritual practice and its connection to Graeco-Roman magic. Utilizing archaeological and literary evidence, it dealt with the reception history of particular biblical passages as refracted through the Jewish encounter with the Hellenistic world, and the impact of this encounter on Jewish religion and rabbinic texts. The dissertation was transformed into a book, for Brown University's Judaic Studies series, and was published by the Society for Biblical Literature in 2008 under the title Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World. More recently he co-authored a Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity (135-700 CE) together with Fergus Millar and Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press in 2012.
Angie Irma Cohon (née Reinhart, 1890-1991) was a Jewish author, poet, translator, and educator. Born to parents J.F. and Amelia (Marks) Reinhart in 1890, Cohon lived in Portland, Oregon until moving to Ohio at 19 to attend Hebrew Union College. She transferred to the University of Cincinnati, earning a bachelors degree in 1912. On June 12 of the same year she graduated, Cohon married Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon. In Chicago, they ran Temple Mizpah, with A. Irma Cohon organizing the sisterhood (Women of Mizpah) and the synagogue's religious school. A prayer pamphlet she prepared, A Brief Jewish Ritual, was published by Women of Mizpah in 1921. Cohon is best known for her contributions to the field of Jewish music in the English language. The National Council on Jewish Women published Introduction to Jewish Music in Eight Illustrated Lectures, with a second edition coming out in 1923. This work became a basis for the Council's study of music for nearly 30 years. She collaborated with Abraham Zevi Idelsohn on Harvest Festivals, A Children’s Succoth Celebration (1925).
The Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is a seminary in Rochester, New York affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. The school is progressive and ecumenical in theology, with Baptists, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and members of other denominations on its faculty and in its student body. The school also shares a partnership with Bexley Hall Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary. It is accredited by the Commission on Accrediting of the Association of Theological Schools. Notable faculty include Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), Baptist pastor and theologian integral to the Social Gospel movement, and Conrad Henry Moehlman (1879–1961), church historian. Notable graduates include Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th century.
Richard Collis is a London-based Jewish author, singer, and entrepreneur.
comYakowenko is a Yiddishist in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The Consistoire central israélite de France (English: Israelite Central Consistory of France) is an institution originally created by Napoleon I by the Imperial Decree of 17 March 1808 to administer Jewish worship and congregations in France. Given Napoleon's political emancipation of the Jews, he wanted a representative body that could deal with his government. He also directed the establishment of regional Israelite Consistories, subordinate to the Central Consistory, across France and Italy. The consistories were ranked as établissements publics du culte (public-law corporations of worship). In its first year, the consistory was led by Rabbi David Sinzheim, who headed the Assembly of Notables and the Grand Sanhedrin that preceded it in organization.
Harry Coopersmith (b. Russia, 2 December 1902; d. Santa Barbara, California, 31 December 1975) was a pioneer in the dissemination of Jewish music in America. Coopersmith studied music education at Teachers’ College, Columbia University (BS, 1924; MA, 1933). He was music director at the Chicago Bureau of Jewish Education (1926-1940) and the Anshe Emet Synagogue.
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (משה קורדובירו ; 1522–1570) was a central figure in the historical development of Kabbalah, leader of a mystical school in 16th-century Safed, Ottoman Syria (currently Tsfat, Israel). He is known by the acronym the Ramaḳ (רמ״ק). After the Medieval flourishing of Ḳabbalah, centered on the Zohar, attempts were made to give a complete intellectual system to its theology, such as by Meir ibn Gabbai. Influenced by the earlier success of Jewish philosophy in articulating a rational study of Jewish thought, Moshe Cordovero produced the first full integration of the previous differing schools in Kabbalistic interpretation. While he was a mystic inspired by the imagery of the Zohar, Cordoverian Kabbalah utilized the conceptual framework of evolving cause and effect from the Infinite to the Finite in systemizing Kabbalah, the method of philosophical style discourse he held most effective in describing a process that reflects sequential logic and coherence. His encyclopedic works became a central stage in the development of Kabbalah. Immediately after him in Safed, Isaac Luria articulated a subsequent system of Ḳabbalistic theology, with new supra-rational doctrines recasting previous Ḳabbalistic thought. While Lurianism displaced the Cordoverian scheme and became predominant in Judaism, its followers read Cordoverian works in harmony with their teachings. Where to them, Lurianism described the "World" of Rectification, Cordovero described the pre-Rectification World. Both articulations of the 16th century mystical Renaissance in Safed gave Ḳabbalah an intellectual prominence to rival Medieval Rationalism, whose social influence on Judaism had waned after the Expulsion from Spain.
Norman Lewis Corwin (May 3, 1910 – October 18, 2011) was a Jewish-American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing. His earliest and biggest successes were in the writing and directing of radio drama during the 1930s and 1940s.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor serves as the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence at UJA-Federation New York and was the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. A frequent speaker in communities and campuses around the United States and Israel with over 1 million views of his online videos and essays, he was named by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America. His 22 books and 6 albums of original music include the global anthem "Olam Chesed Yibaneh" and the anthologies "When We Turned Within" and "None Shall Make Them Afraid." He has been involved in the leadership of American Jewish World Service, AIPAC, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the One America Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing together Americans of different faiths and opinions. He and his wife Neshama Carlebach live in New York, where they are raising their five children.
Abraham Cronbach (February 15, 1882 – April 2, 1965) was a Reform movement rabbi in the United States, a teacher, and a leader and activist for Jewish pacifism. He served as a rabbi for congregations in Indiana, Ohio, and New York. Cronbach was one of the founders of the Peace Heroes Memorial Society and a co-founder of the Jewish Peace Fellowship.
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