Mordechai

Z.

Cohen

A popular professor on campus and recipient of the Senior Professor Awards at Yeshiva College and Stern College, Cohen’s research focuses on Jewish Bible interpretation in its Muslim and Christian cultural contexts. After earning his PhD in 1994 on the Jewish tradition of figurative Bible interpretation, an NEH fellowship he was awarded in 1995 to study Arabic poetics was pivotal for Cohen’s comparative research. It led to his first published volume, Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor (2003). His second volume, Opening the Gates of Interpretation (2011) showed how Maimonides’ legal hermeneutics drew upon Muslim jurisprudence. Recognized worldwide as an expert in Jewish Bible interpretation, Cohen served as an editor of the multivolume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception from 2009–2012. 

In 2010/11, Cohen directed a fourteen-member international research group at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, leading to the publication of Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries (2016), co-edited with Adele Berlin, as well as Cohen’s next book, The Rule of Peshat (2020), a comprehensive investigation of the medieval tradition of Jewish plain-sense interpretation in its Muslim and Christian cultural contexts. His latest book, Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe (2021) is likewise the product of a discovery made during his tenure in Jerusalem.

For the last five years Cohen has taught an annual summer seminar at the Shandong University Center for Judaic and Inter-religious studies in Jinan, China, and has participated in philosophical conferences in Beijing. Having learned Mandarin, Cohen developed a network of Chinese scholars worldwide interested in engaging with Jewish learning. Since 2018 Cohen has implemented this vision through the Chinese-Jewish Conversation, which he directs. CJC is a forum for comparative study of these two cultural traditions, and also provides a welcome space on campus for YU’s growing Chinese student population.