Idelsohn: The Founder and Builder of the Science of Jewish Music – A Creator of Jewish Song

It is with great pleasure that we present A. Irma Cohon's account of Idelsohn's life, character, and works. For many years the lives of Mrs. Cohon and her husband, Rabbi Samuel Solomon Cohon (18881959), were intimately connected with Idelsohn's life and works. Irma Cohon was born in Portland, Oregon on September 8, 1890. She studied at the University of Cincinnati where she met her future husband, then a rabbinic student at the Hebrew Union College. They were married in 1912 upon their graduation. Rabbi Cohon became one of the most important spokesmen of Reform Judaism in the United States, and a prolific writer on Judaica. He was influential in reestablishing a 'favourable attitude towards traditional Jewish observances, the Hebrew language, and the idea Of Jewish peoplehood' in American Reform congregations, and was the 'principal draftsman' of the famous 'Columbus Platform' adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1937 (see EP V, 694). 

Rabbi Cohon's interests and convictions were supported by his wife's great interest in traditional Jewish music. Her efforts to educate the Jewish public in the value of its musical heritage began long before her acquaintance with Idelsohn. In 1923 the year of Idelsohn's arrival in the United States, the Council of Jewish Women in New York Published a second edition of her Introduction to Jewish Music in Eight Illustrated Lectures.  Thus Idelsohn could find no better supporters than Rabbi Cohon with his progressive theological ideas and his love of Jewish tradition, and Mrs. Cohon with her love of Jewish music.