{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Jacob_Cohen"}
Salomon Jacob Cohen (Hebrew: שלום הכהן; 23 December 1771 - 20 February 1845) was a German Jewish Hebrew scholar, teacher, writer and translator of the Bible. He was an important representative of the Haskalah in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna.

Life

Cohen was born in Międzyrzecz (Greater Poland), which after the Second Partition of Poland became administered as part of South Prussia. As a teenager, he went to Berlin, where he studied with Naphtali Hirz Wessely and developed an appreciation of Hebrew poetry. He was soon regarded as an outstanding stylist of Hebrew. From 1800 to 1808, he taught Hebrew and religion at the Jewish Free School in Berlin, founded by David Friedländer. In 1808, he founded the Society of Friends of the Hebrew Language (Gesellschaft der Freunde der hebräischen Sprache). From 1809 to 1811, he was the last editor of the first Hebrew literary journal Ha-Meassef, which he tried unsuccessfully to revive. Cohen also lived in Altona, Hamburg, Dessau, and London before settling in Hamburg. In 1820, he went to Vienna, where he founded the first Hebrew journal in Austria, the literary magazine Bikkurej ha-ittim ("First Fruits of the Times"). In 1810, he translated the biblical book of Jeremiah into German; and from 1824 to 1827, he completed a German edition of the Old Testament in Hamburg. He died in Hamburg.

Selected works