COHEN, MORTIMER JOSEPH

COHEN, MORTIMER JOSEPH (1894–1972), U.S. rabbi and author. Cohen, who was born in New York City and educated in public schools in Charleston, South Carolina, and New York, earned his B.S. at the City College of New York (1915) and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1919. He served as rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Philadelphia. While serving as rabbi, he attended Dropsie College and earned his Ph.D. (1935). His thesis on Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy was published in 1937 and described in its historical, psychological, and sociological contexts the feud between emden and Jonathan eibeschuetz . Jews who had left older Orthodox and Conservative congregations formed Beth Shalom with 25 families, which under Cohen soon established itself as a Conservative congregation, putting up its first building in 1922. Established in the heart of Philadelphia's Jewish neighborhood in the aftermath of World War I, it boldly moved out of the city after World War II when Cohen persuaded his congregation to follow the Jewish population into the nearby suburbs. At first, it only built an educational and synagogue center in Elkins Park and services were conducted in the city and in the suburbs. As Jews moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, the suburban branch brought with it a new membership that sought to find full religious services locally. Cohen then hit upon an innovative idea and the congregation commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright, a preeminent American non-Jewish architect, to design its new sanctuary. Working closely with Cohen, whom he credited as co-designer, Wright designed an exterior that represented Mount Sinai and an impressive interior. The American Institute of Architecture recognized the distinguished quality of the design, adding greater visibility to the synagogue and prestige to the newly arrived Jews who commissioned such a brilliant building. A model of the synagogue is shown at beth hatefutsoth , the Museum of the Diaspora, in Tel Aviv. As a writer, Cohen was editor of Pathways Through the Bible (1946), a popular condensation of the Bible for the general reader, which went through numerous editions and was translated into Spanish and Portuguese. He was one of the founders, and editor for six years, of the Jewish Welfare Board's In Jewish Bookland and The Jewish Book Annual. He was president of the Jewish Book Council and of the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis. A man of many talents, he also composed four oratorios with the congregation's musical director Gedaliah Rabinowitz and wrote a number of plays. He also wrote on the design of the synagogue in Beth Shalom Synagogue: A Description and Interpretation (1959). His wife, Helen Kalikman Cohen, co-authored with P.T. Davis the story of his collaborative work with Wright in Together They Built a Mountain (1974). -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Beth Shalom Story, 1919–1969 (1969); P.S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988). (Jack Reimer / Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)