Idov Cohen

Idov Cohen was born in 1909 in Mihăileni

Idov Cohen was born in 1909 in Mihăileni, in Botoșani County, Romania. His father ran a flour shop. He studied at a yeshiva in his village and educated himself in general culture.

He moved to Bucharest and worked as a bookkeeper from 1927 to 1933, while publishing stories in Yiddish and later writing in Romanian. From 1933 to 1939 he was General Secretary of the Jewish National Fund in Romania. He also edited and sat on the boards of several Zionist and Jewish literary periodicals.

In 1940 he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, where he edited Zionist periodicals and helped found a group of immigrants from Romania. In 1948 he founded the Organisation for Romanian Immigrants. He also earned his living translating into Hebrew from German, English, Yiddish, French and Romanian.

A founding member of the Progressive Party, he sat on the Tel Aviv city council and entered the Knesset in 1949. In 1961 he initiated the merger with the General Zionists that formed the Liberal Party. He resigned from the Knesset on 11 November 1963.

In 1976 he published a Hebrew book on the heritage of Romanian Jewry. He died in Tel Aviv in 1998. He was married to Leah and had 3 children.