Cohen, Armond E.

views updated

COHEN, ARMOND E.

COHEN, ARMOND E. (1909– ), U.S. Conservative rabbi. Cohen was born in Canton, Ohio, and ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1934. He spent his entire career as rabbi of the Cleveland Jewish Center (renamed Park Synagogue in 1951), which, under his stewardship, grew to some 2,000 families. A proponent of interdenominational cooperation, Cohen was active in both civic and Jewish communal affairs. He was also a staunch Zionist, serving as president of the Ohio chapter of the Zionist Organization of America and later honorary president of the entire organization. He was an advocate of pastoral psychology and lectured in the Department of Religio-Psychiatry of the Jewish Theological Seminary (1969–74), as well as at the American Foundation of Religion and Health (1965–75), which he also served as a member of its Board of Directors. As chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Marriage and the Family (1958–60), he lobbied successfully for marriage counseling to be provided under the auspices of the Rabbinical Assembly and the Seminary. He was also a member of the Seminary's Board of Overseers and of the Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly (1950–58). In 1945, he published All God's Children: A Jew Speaks, a collection of open letters on Jewish-Christian relations and Jewish tradition that had previously appeared anonymously in his synagogue's bulletin.

bibliography:

P.S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988).

[Bezalel Gordon (2nd ed.)]