Rachael Kohn


Rachael Kohn is an Australian author and broadcaster who since 1992 has presented and produced programs on Religion and Spirituality for ABC Radio National, beginning with Religion Report, Religion Today, and from 1997 to 2018, The Spirit of Things.
Kohn has also produced award-winning features for Encounter as well as the television documentaries The Dead Sea Scrolls and Buddhism East and West. She also produced the program Paws for Thought on animals and spirituality for Compass on ABC TV. For six years Kohn also was Producer and Presenter of The Ark on Radio National. which focused on Religious History.
Kohn is a frequent speaker on Religion and Spirituality in Australia. She has published two books, The New Believers: Re-imagining God and Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and Spirituality.
In the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours Kohn was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for "distinguished service to the broadcast media, particularly radio, as a creator, producer and presenter, and to Jewish studies".

Biography

Kohn was born in Canada. Her parents lived in Czechoslovakia until the occupation by the Soviet Union in 1949. They settled in Israel in 1949, moving to Canada in 1952.
Kohn was awarded a Diploma in Social Work from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, Ontario, then achieved an Hon.B.A. in Sociology and Religion at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. Kohn then earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. For both degrees she also studied Buddhism.
Kohn taught religious studies at McMaster University and at Lancaster University in Lancaster, England, where she was Leverhulme Post-Doctoral Fellow in Religious Studies. She also taught Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, and then at the University of Sydney. Moving to Australia after marrying an Australian man, property developer Tom Breen, she joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1992.

Publications

Kohn has published two books, The New Believers: Re-imagining God and Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and Spirituality. She has published numerous articles, chapters, and essays in books, journals and newspapers and on the ABC Religion and Ethics website.
Recent publications include, 'Saints and Saintliness in Judaism' in In the Land of Larks and Heroes: Australian Reflections on Saint Mary MacKillop ; 'Jewish Thought and the Theory of Evolution' in Darwin on Evolution and 'Jews and Violence' in Validating Violence, Violating Faith? ; 'The Aging Spirit' in Ageing and Spirituality Across Faiths and Cultures, as well as "Is Jewish Thought Unique" in the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 2010.
Kohn has written on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Future of Religion, the Future of Judaism, Happiness, Aging, Education, and Interfaith Relations, Cults.