COHEN, HIRSH

COHEN, HIRSH (1860–1950), Canadian rabbi. Cohen was born in Budwicz, Russian Poland, and was educated at the Volozhin Yeshivah. He obtained his semikhah from R. Jacob David *Willowski (Ridbaz). He immigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1889 or 1890. After a short period in Chicago, during which he qualified as a shoḥet, he returned to Montreal as a shoḥet, teacher, and preacher. He became superintendent of Montreal's Talmud Torah in 1901 and began functioning as a rabbi. Supported by his older brother, Lazarus Cohen, a prominent communal leader, and by Hirsch *Wolofsky, publisher of Montreal's Yiddish daily, Keneder Adler, Cohen began a protracted struggle to become preeminent in Montreal's immigrant Orthodox rabbinate in the area of the supervision of kashrut, facing such rivals as Rabbis Simon Glazer and Yudel *Rosenberg. His efforts culminated in 1922 with the founding of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal (Va'ad ha-Ir). He became head of the Council's rabbinical body (Va'ad ha-Rabbanim), and thus widely recognized as Montreal's chief rabbi. He struggled to maintain the integrity of the Council and its monopoly over kashrut supervision in Montreal in the face of numerous challenges. He was active in Jewish communal issues, in particular those related to Jewish education and Zionism. He was well known as a public speaker in Yiddish and often published his speeches in the Keneder Adler. He retained the title of chief rabbi to his death, though he was not active in his last years due to illness.

bibliography:

Keneder Adler (Nov. 19, 1950); I. Robinson, Canadian Ethnic Studies 22 (1990), 41–53.

[Ira Robinson (2^nd ed.)]