Henry Cohen

Henry Cohen Community House on Left. First B'nai Israel Temple on Right

Henry Cohen (April 7, 1863 – June 12, 1952) was a British-American rabbi, scholar, community activist and writer who served most of his career at Congregation B'nai Israel in Galveston, Texas, from 1888 to 1949. He came to the United States in 1885, during a period of rapid and massive growth related to early 20th-century immigration from eastern and southern Europe. In Texas, he organized the Galveston Movement, which worked from 1907 to 1914 to attract eastern European Jewish immigrants to Galveston and the Gulf Coast as a destination, as an alternative to the better known Northeastern cities. Ten thousand such immigrants entered at Galveston.

When his congregation built a community house in 1928, they named it in his honor. He helped organize and lead many educational and community institutions. Able to read ten languages, he was known as a Talmud scholar, and published books about Texas history and Judaism. Together with rabbi David Lefkowitz of Dallas, Cohen interviewed many Jewish Texans to collect their histories for the Texas Centennial in 1936.

Early life, education and career Henry Cohen was born in 1863 to David and Josephine C. Cohen, a Jewish family in London, England. He was a brother of Maurice Abraham Cohen. He was educated in local schools, worked with the Board of Guardians, a Jewish relief agency, and studied at Jews' College. Before graduating, in 1880 he traveled to Cape Town Colony, South Africa, where he worked as an interpreter for the British government. In 1883 he returned to England, completing his studies and being ordained a rabbi in 1884.

He migrated to Kingston, Jamaica for his first assignment, where there was a sizable Sephardic Jewish community.

He and others worked to resettle Jews in the middle of the country, from the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains. Members of Cohen's congregation would meet Jewish immigrants arriving at the port, and help them find places to stay and work, as well as introduce them to their new society and help them adjust to the United States. The movement was often internally divided, and many European Jews were intent on reaching known industrial cities.

Cohen served all the people, working to have the age of sexual consent raised from ten to eighteen for girls. He served on the state prison board for three decades, and achieved reforms: introducing vocational training, parole reforms, and separation of first offenders from seasoned criminals.

Written works In the 1890s Cohen contributed articles for the Texas Journal of Education, along with translations and poems.

Books included the following: Talmudic Sayings (1894) Monographs included: - Settlement of the Jews in Texas (1894), - Henry Castro, Pioneer and Colonist (1896), - The Galveston Immigration Movement, 1907–1910 (1910) with David Lefkowitz, he coauthored One Hundred Years of Jewry in Texas (1936?)

Legacy and honors In 1928 Congregation B'nai Israel named its new center as the Henry Cohen Community House in his honor. His papers and library are housed at the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. A state historical marker in Galveston commemorates the synagogue and Henry Cohen.