Prof. Naomi W. Cohen

Naomi W. Cohen
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Naomi W. Cohen is a native of New York.She received her Ph.D. degree in history at Columbia Univers ...

Author: Naomi W. Cohen
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Naomi W. Cohen is a native of New York.She received her Ph.D. degree in history at Columbia University.At present she is Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
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In her comprehensive work Naomi W. Cohen offers impressive evidence to claim that "it was the German Jew--not the Sephardic pioneers nor the numerous Russian Jews--who laid the foundations of the modern American Jewish community."
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With emancipation as the rubric for understanding German Jews in America, [the author] sees the American-Jewish experience as an extension of the western European Jewish encounter with modernity rather than as part of a distinctly American immigration ... Cohen makes an important contribution to the study of religion in nineteenth-century America through her thoughtful exploration of the relationship between religious liberty and religious equality ... Cohen draws largely on published sources, but she does far more than synthesize the fruits of past scholarship ... Future historians of American Jews--even social historians who look to different types of sources and ask other questions--will have to start their researches here.
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In her introduction Professor Cohen warns that her book makes "no claim to all-inclusiveness."As a pioneering effort, it leaves much unsaid and many questions unanswered.It depends largely on English-language and secondary sources, and not always the most recent ones ...Still, this volume, which is the product of years of research and careful reflection, is a mature work.Professor Cohen builds her synthesis around the theme of Jewish emancipation, the political process that conferred citizenship and legal equality on Jews where they had formerly been second-class citizens ... Without being apologetic or anachronistic, [this book] offers something that American Jewish historical writing has rarely before provided, a past that speaks to contemporary concerns.
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Cohen's detailed, fact-crammed work is an important addition to studies about Jews and Judaism ... {The author} deals particularly with the institutional responses worked out by the "reigning" German Jewish leadership who reacted to the "dilemmas inherent in emancipation," i.e., how to draw the boundary line between Jewish identities and cultural assimilation.Cohen (Hunter College and NYU Graduate Center) credits Jews from Germany and German-speaking regions of Poland and Austria with shaping the religious and secular philanthropic institutions and behavior patterns that prevail today ...A rich mixture, making no concessions to undergraduate, non-specialized readers, but a necessary book for all academic libraries, undergraduate level and above.

- Choice

Naomi W. Cohen has triumphally explored a neglected chapter not only of American Jewish history but of American history itself.The deftness with which she has handled an immense range of sources and turned them into a gripping, incisive narrative is a fresh tribute to her established skill as a researcher and writer.

NAOMI W. COHEN, Hunter College, CUNY

Separation of church and state has become a veritable creed in the American Jewish community.Focusing on the way in which Jewish actions have contributed to the development of separation, this book examines how American Jews have contended with living in a fundamentally Christian state.In the first part, Cohen covers this history hronologically from colonial times to the Second World War.Throughout this period, Jewish community leaders focused on legislation and judicial opinions that in any way bespoke established Christianity.They were principally concerned with test oaths, Sunday laws, religion in public schools, and Christianity in federal treaties--issues that in one form or another have lasted well into the twentieth century.Dealing with the period after World War II, the second part of the book consists of an in-depth analysis of Jewish participation in, and responses to, litigation on such issues as released time, prayer and bible readings in public schools, Sunday laws, and religious decorations in public places.Cohen also considers how separationism evoked differences of opinion among Jews and how it affected Jewish-Christian relations.

316 pp.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; 0-19-506537-9

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With Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, Naomi W. Cohen, the distinguished former professor of Jewish History at Hunter College and author of Jews in Christian America, has provided us with the first full-length biography of Schiff.
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Schiff, Cohen notes, "labored to shape a collective Jewish identity in tune with the modern era, an identity predicated on Jewish continuity even as it broke from ghetto life."