Aryeh Cohen


Aryeh Cohen is an American rabbi and scholar who serves as a professor of Rabbinic Literature at American Jewish University. His scholarship focuses on the Talmud, Jewish ethics, and social justice.

Education

Cohen received his BA in Philosophy and Jewish Thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was ordained as a rabbi by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

Career

Cohen has held appointments at American Jewish University since 1995. He was Chair of Jewish Studies in the College of Arts and Science from 1995–2000 and Chair of Rabbinic Studies in the Ziegler School from 2001–2005.
Cohen has also taught at Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and at Brandeis University.

Activism

Cohen is also the Rabbi-in-Residence for in Southern California. He has been active in protesting deportations carried out by ICE and “zero tolerance” US immigration policies.
In 2017, Cohen was one of the rabbis who signed a statement by Jewish Veg encouraging veganism for all Jews.
Cohen is one of the founders of the Shtibl minyan.

Scholarship

Cohen is the author of Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law and the Poetics of Sugyot and Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbi Alana Suskin has described Justice in the City as essential reading for the Occupy movement. Cohen is also co-editor of Beginning/Again: Towards a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts. He has also written about modern figures including Aharon Shmuel Tamares and Emmanuel Levinas. Andrew Flescher has argued that Cohen's work on Tamares and Levinas "makes a compelling case in his own right for the counter-productive nature of violence under all circumstances."
His articles and book chapters include: