Name Evelyn Cohen | Parents Haskell Cohen | |
 | ||
Awards National Jewish Book Award for Visual Arts | ||
Evelyn M. Cohen is an American art historian.
Contents
Career
Cohen is an expert in the art of medieval Jewish manuscripts.
Cohen was responsible for reuniting the two halves of the oldest dated Jewish manuscript from the German lands. While working in an archive, she recognized that the partial manuscript of a Jewish holiday prayer book that she was examining was the other half of a prayer book that she had examined in another archive. The manuscript was the personal prayer book of Qalonimos ben Yehuda dated 28 Tevet, 5050 (January 12, 1290), Esslingen am Neckar.
Cohen is noted particularly for her work on the role of Jewish women in commissioning, owning and using books in the medieval period and Renaissance. She has recovered and describes several prayer books written in the feminine voice, including some that feature, among the blessings that begin the morning prayer, the blessing " "Blessed are you God, master of the universe, that You have made me a woman and not a man."
Other manuscripts that Cohen has studied feature women in the illuminations.
Cohen received the winner of the National Jewish Book Award for her book on the Rothschild Maḥzor of 1492 co-authored with Menachem Schmelzer.
Cohen is the daughter of Haskell Cohen, the former Publicity Director of the NBA.