Leopold Cohn (Christian clergyman), Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetLeopold Cohn (Christian clergyman)
American Jewish convert
Date of Birth: 
About Leopold Cohn (Christian clergyman)
- Leopold Hoffman Cohn (September 12, 1862, Berezna, Hungary - December 19, 1937, Brooklyn, NY) was a Jewish convert to evangelical Christianity who formed the Brownsville Mission to the Jews, an organization that now exists as Chosen People Ministries.
- Cohn lived in Hungary, and, shortly after his arrival to the United States, converted to Christianity.
- He was ordained a Baptist minister.
- In his day, he was one of the most successful and controversial Christian evangelists to the Jews.
- In 1930, Cohn was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity by Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian college. Cohn states in his autobiography that he was ordained as a rabbi in his native Hungary in the 1880s, though Jews doubted this claim.
- Yaakov Shalom Ariel writes that "there could be little doubt that he was well read in rabbinical literature and had acquired, after his conversion to Christianity, a good knowledge of Christian theology as well." Even his name was contested: Rabbi David Max Eichhorn writes that "As early as October 13, 1893, Adolph Benjamin wrote in the Hebrew Standard that Cohn's real name was Itsak Leib Joszovics".
- In a 1913 court case, a number of people claiming to be Cohn's relatives and friends stated that Cohn was in fact Joszovics, a saloonkeeper who had been arrested and sentenced for fraud in Hungary in 1891, and that he left Hungary to avoid serving a two and a half years sentence, leaving behind his wife and children.
- The relationship between Cohn and his detractors was acrimonious, resulting in several lawsuits and counter-complaints.
- Cohn denied the accusations and the court refused to act upon the charge.
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