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Bidding Information
Lot #    25739
Auction End Date    1/12/2010 12:32:50 PM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    The Hebrew Language
Author    [First Ed.] R. G. M. Cohen
City    New York
Publisher    J. M. Jackson
Publication Date    1850
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    First edition. vi, 3-74, [1]: viii, 3-31 pp., 182:107 mm., light age staining. A good copy not bound.
          
Detailed
Description		    Cohen was born ca. 1820 and he was in America by 1844. "Probably the first musically trained, modern cantor in the United States" (Gartner [1978], 24), he used his own musical arrangements as well those en vogue in the synagogues of Munich, Paris and Vienna. In 1845 he was appointed the cantor of New York's newly-founded Temple Emanu-El and he proceeded to establish the first permanent synagogue choir in America. (For his duties as a cantor, see Grinstein, 484.) While at Emanu-EI, Cohen came under the influence of its rabbi, Leo Merzbacher, and began to sympathize with Reform Judaism. In 1856 he was fired by Emanu-EI and he subsequently served as the cantor of Chicago's Kehilath Anshe Mayriv. Owing to his penchant for Reform, however, he fell into disfavor with the more tra­ditional members of the congregation and he was forced out in 1857. He thereafter served as the rabbi of the short-lived Israelite Reform Society, which consisted of members who left Kehilath Anshe Mayriv. In Chicago Cohen was also active in B'nai B'rith. In 1860 he was hired by a congregation in Cleveland. There he estab­lished the Zion Musical Society, most likely the first Jewish musical group in America. Cohen was also a Hebrew school teacher and has been described as a "good Hebraist and a fine pedagogue" (Chomsky [1959], 143). As a "trained pedagogue" he was a "true rarit[y]" in the American Jewish community (Gartner [1978], 55) and, in "the late 1840s, [he was] the leading advocate" of introducing modern pedagogical tech­niques into Hebrew education (Grinstein, 256). Cohen also served as a rabbi in Milwaukee in 1865 (and! or 1869?). He died in Cleveland in 1902.

"The Hebrew Language is still an object of instruction for youth, but perverted methods make the instruction futile ... little has been done here, in the land of freedom [to modernize Hebrew education] ... The total want of a book demonstrating the Elements of the Hebrew Language, similar to OLLENDORFF's method for learning foreign languages, has for a long time been perceived by the author" (pp. iii-iv,

          
Reference
Description		    HPA 267
        
Associated Images
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Listing Classification
Period
19th Century:    Checked
  
Location
America-South America:    Checked
  
Subject
Other:    Grammar
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    English, some Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica