Name Ephraim Cohen-Reiss | Died 1943 | |
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Ephraim Cohen-Reiss (born 1863 in Jerusalem, died 1943 in France) was one of the earliest founders of modern education in Israel, and at the turn of the 20th century established the first Hebrew school system in Palestine and the Levant. The Cohen-Reiss Price at King David High School in Vancouver was named after him.
When he was 15, Cohen-Reiss went to Europe from 1878–1887 and was trained in Germany (Bildungs-Anstalt für jüdische Lehrer, Hanover) and England. He returned to Jerusalem, where he was commissioned to restructure the school system in Palestine. Cohen-Reiss' vision was to create a more advanced curriculum with science and arts with everything taught in Hebrew. Cohen-Reiss worked with his friend Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the founder of modern Hebrew, to incorporate new Hebrew words into the system. In the next 25 years, 27 schools had been founded under his plan (including Israel's first co-ed program), and by 1912 the language of Palestine was Hebrew.