by Paul R. Spitzzeri
For Los Angeles’ Jewish community, the B’nai B’rith Messenger was, for nearly a century from 1898 to 1995, a vital source of news, commentary and more and the Homestead’s collection includes contains five individual issues from 1927-1928 and a run from July to December 1929 of the publication. Those single editions came when the publication was still under the ownership of founder Lionel Edwards, while the group of issues came just after new ownership took over and the publication was merged with the California Jewish Review.
Over more than fifteen years, an important figure in the Messenger was Rabbi Montague Nathan Albert Cohen (1877-1950), who had a remarkable and varied life and career of about a half-century, including editorials for the publication. This post will focus on his four editorials in the 21 December 1928 edition—we will return in the future with another that will look at other content in the number—but let’s take a look at some aspects of his life and career for context.
If the names “Montague” and “Albert” sound unusual for a Jewish rabbi, that may be because of his origins. Cohen was born to Prussian emigrants Eugene Cohen and Pauline Aschheim in London, where his father was a salesman for a map and print seller in the great British metropolis as well as the thriving steel center of Manchester, with the family living in a large and substantial Jewish neighborhood.
Cohen was educated at Jews’ College, established in London in 1855 as a seminary for rabbis, though only some 65 students received their ordination there from 1896 to 1967, while he also was a graduate of The University of London, which was common for those who attended the former institution and, later there was an affiliated status of Jews’ College at the latter. Since 1999, it has been known as the London School of Jewish Studies with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Jewish Studies in partnership with Middlesex University.
Cohen’s studies focused on Semitic languages and, not long after he completed his education, he headed for Canada and briefly settled in Vancouver, British Columbia and there married Celia Brash, a native of Posen, Germany, but who migrated with her family to the Americas when she was a baby—the Cohens, who became American citizens in 1908, did not have any children. In 1903, Cohen became a rabbi at Temple B’nai Israel in Sacramento and generally served three-year terms in most of his posts in succeeding years.
These included Pueblo, Colorado, where he was on the staff of the Jewish Outlook, based in Denver, and then Butte, Montana, while, in 1912, he because the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in San Diego, where he was installed by Sigmund Hecht, who was the senior rabbi of the Congregation B’nai B’rith for two decades and trained his successor, Edgar F. Magnin.
For the 17 January 1913 edition of the Messenger, Cohen wrote a lengthy article on “The Union of American Hebrew Congregations” with the subheading of “Liberal Judaism in the United States.” His activism with Reform, or Liberal or Progressive, Judaism, which began in 19th century Germany included its core commitment to social justice.
In fact, Cohen drew some widespread attention during December 1912 when it was reported in papers like the Long Beach Press-Telegram that,
Jewish residents of San Diego, led by Rabbi Montague Cohen, have protested to the school authorities that Christmas stories and legends as told in the local schools at Christmas time are contrary to the teachings of the Hebrew church and in violation of the state law in regard to religious teachings in the public schools.
The response from educational department officials was that those offerings were presented as folklore and not as instruction “in a religious sense.” The Los Angeles Express of 18 February 1913 included a brief report from San Francisco that “a plea for the abolition of religious teaching in public schools” was issued at a convention of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith in San Francisco via a resolution by Cohen and another rabbi, H.S. Wolf, in which as “Americans and not as Jews the abolition of such teaching was urged.” After discussion, however, the resolution was tabled.
The fourth gathering of the Jewish Chautauqua Society, held at the Angel City’s Temple B’nai B’rith at Hope and 9th streets as well as the Temple Sinai at 12th and Valencia streets in July 1914 included many presentations, with Lillian Burkhart Goldsmith, a vaudeville performer and author of religious pageants talking about “Poetry of the Bible,” while Cohen spoke on “Opportunities of the Jew to Serve the Cause of Judaism.”
By mid-decade, Cohen was a member of the District Social Service Committee for International Order of B’nai B’rith and, in summer 1916, the Los Angeles Roman Catholic newspaper, The Tidings, reported that the rabbi presided over a fundraiser by the Friends of Irish Freedom, this just after the Easter Rising in Ireland. In his remarks, Cohen told the assemblage “that the Jews and the Irish would soon come into their own and retain it with the support of the nations,” meaning for the former, the establishment of a homeland in Palestine.
At the start of 1913, very shortly after taking up his rabbinical work in San Diego, Cohen was appointed the San Diego representative for the Messenger providing content about the activities and events of Jews in that city. Within a year, however, he was promoted to associate editor and then was made a co-editor, eventually with Magnin. He continued in this role, even as he left California to take up posts in other parts of the country.
In 1916, he and Celia relocated to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, northwest of Philadelphia, and, two years later, moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, northwest of Durham and Raleigh. With the entry of the United States in World War I, Cohen began working at nearby Camp Greene under the auspices of the Jewish Welfare Board (he went on to be a chaplain of the Army Reserve). In its edition of 17 May 1918, the Messenger congratulated the rabbi on his latest move, stating,
The B’nai B’rith Messenger joins his many friends and acquaintances in wishing him increased success and we feel that any community that secures the services of Rabbi Cohen is sure to progress as he is of a most zealous and energetic nature, and added to this he possesses a congenial disposition that attracts people to him.
A little over a year later, another relocation was undertaken, this time back to the Keystone State to York, due west of Philadelphia and the Messenger of 11 July 1919, called Cohen “one of the best known, learned and brilliant men in the Jewish ministry” as well as “a writer whose productions are widely read and copied.” It was added that he’d been religious editor of the paper for some time “and his articles are read with interest each week.”
For much of the Roaring Twenties, the Cohens resided in Tacoma, where Montague was rabbi at Temple Beth Israel from fall 1924 through spring 1929, while still retaining his editorial duties with the Messenger, which changed its format in March 1925. For the edition featured here, the first of the quartet of editorials penned by Cohen was titled “Raring to Do Something” and he began by observing that “there is nothing so unfortunate and depressing, not to mention destructive to progress and upbuilding, as the tieing [sic] of hands when great matters are at stake.”
He went on to remark on a recent New York City meeting of the United Synagog[ue] of America, a Conservative organization established some fifteen years earlier, noting that the association “represented a tremendous majority of American Jewry and has great potentialities.” Cohen added that it was understood that more was needed to serve Jews “than institutions of religion” as “there must be man-power and woman-power, and young man-power and young woman-power behind them.”
The writer cited a statement that there was a felt need to “bring spiritual power and spiritual influences to bear upon the younger people in the homes, and the older people in their various communities,” but that “affiliation with a congregation . . . means little in effect unless and until meaning is given thereto.” He closed by asserting that there was a lot of good to come from the United Synagogue and remarked that “several of the Rabbis of that group deplored the lapse of youth, lack of reverence and other matters, and are determined to put an end to all this obstacle to Jewish progress and Jewish observance.” As work was undertaken to meet goals, with “no let-up,” it was noted that “others of us may take a lesson.
Cohen’s mediation on “Ignorance” as used at the above meeting started with the fact that it “is an ugly and harsh word” but that the rabbi who intoned it did so “without any qualms of conscience, much less consideration” in averring that “the Jews were so ignorant of their religion that it had ‘become necessary to convert Jews to Judaism.'” The editor’s concern was that this message would not reach those for whom it was directed and will think it was meant for others.
The rabbi considered it “the dire misfortune of Judaism today” that “we have grown up to imagine ourselves very authorities on matters about which we have neither knowledge and understanding.” Until ignorance was addressed “the forces of education, and culture, and light cannot make any advance . . . except very arduously and at the risk of conrumely [contumely, or insolence]. humiliation and persecution.” Combating this terrible foe was such that “these [Jewish] leaders will have made considerable advance when they shall have unseated this enemy.”
Addressing “The Anglo-Jewish Press Grouch,” Cohen looked back toward his place of birth and specifically what he termed “the Anglo-Jewish papers of the British Metropolis’ Finsbury Square,” issued weekly. He expressed his view that these “do not fully reflect the opinion of Anglo-Jewry toward American Jewry” as there was a clear bias in his mind at play in that “they roar, and set up no end of howl” as “they criticize much of what stands forth in American Jewish life and activity.” This included having an rabbit trained in the United States be called to a British pulpit.
While acknowledging that “of course, we have something of like spirit in this country” but “not so very bitter and prejudicial,” at least openly, Cohen pointed to a particular case of an American, Harold Rinehart, appointed by the West London Synagogue of British Jews, but receiving criticism for a man who, the writer commented, “can well look over their heads, mentally and even physically.” Cohen supported Rinehart, stating that “he will fill the bill” and “is going to spiritually head an aristocratic institution, and he will put life and ginger to it.”
The editorial ended with the assertion that “what Anglo-Jewry needs is about fifty American-trained Rabbis to be exported to Great Britain and Ireland and just wake up the communities over there into a consciousness of what militant Judaism is.” Reinhart, whose career in the U.S. included a period in Los Angeles, was a Reform rabbi and remained at the West London Synagogue for nearly thirty years, until 1957, when he left to establish the Westminster Synagogue, remaining its rabbit for a dozen years until his death.
Lastly, Cohen addressed the question of “Has Reform Judaism in American Reached Its Zenith?” Here, he launched his commentary with,
There seems to be something quite apathetic in the ranks of some of our reform Rabbis in this country of late. They appear to be losing heart. They are beset with discouragement. The conditions they see around about them and the lethargic religious situation have weakened their initiative. They are regretful.
A point of concern for the editor was whether Reform Jews had “lost the reality” and wondered if this was so “due to the fact that our large cities have established huge and extravagant synagogal institutions, as also the case with churches, with everything material subservient, an very subservient, to the spiritual” so that this last “is only allowed to meagerly express itself one or two days a year.”
Obviously, Cohen reversed the order! He talked about how “the struggle for livelihood . . . has crushed the spiritual in some degree” while the religious element is more or less active,” though, “more generally, it is absent.” A change was needed to Judaism, because “we are living in an illusion” by having “ornamented it diligently” and “given [it] the appearance of remarkable religiosity, but there is nothing.”
For the writer, the answer was that,
What we have come to call Reform Judaism will have to obtain more cohesiveness and even more consciousness Jewishness than hitherto. Never mind the big things. More attention should be directed to the details. Happy to observe are we that orthodoxy is seeking higher levels to cultural energy in community life . . . We see the time coming when a change will take place. Judaism will be re-naturalized into an expression of all-life. Never mind the theology, and the creed and the dogma. Who wants such? . . . We will have reason, but we will likewise have faith born of a mystic feeling in the individual heart. Reform (sic) Judaism has gone the full gamut of its growing pains. It will normalize down to something very real.
It is noteworthy that Cohen linked the extravagance of Jewish synagogues with those of Christian churches and his statements could easily be viewed ecumenically with regard to the conditions in America during the Roaring Twenties. Of course, no one could foresee what would transpire in the future for Jews in Europe.
As noted at the outset of this post, an ownership change came to the Messenger in summer 1929 and included a revamping of the editorial ranks, with Cohen no longer associated with the paper. He resided in San Jose when the 1930 census was conducted and later returned to Tacoma, but, by 1940, he had moved into insurance sales with Travelers Insurance Company. After retirement, he moved to Vancouver, where his North American experience began and died there in 1950, though he was interred at the Hills of Eternity Reform Cemetery in Seattle.
We’ll return to the pages of this edition of the Messenger at a future date, perhaps next December, so look for a post then. Meanwhile, Happy Hanukkah to Jewish readers as the holiday begins on Christmas Day and continues through the 2nd of January.