Chaim Cohn

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Chaim Cohn (1952)

Chaim Herman Cohn ( חיים הרמן כהן) (Born March 11, 1911 in Lübeck ; † April 10, 2002 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli lawyer , politician and briefly Minister of Justice .

biography

Cohn came from a religious Jewish family in Lübeck and was the son of the banker Zeev Wilhelm Cohn (1883–1980) and his wife Mirjam (1886–1962), née. Carlebach, a daughter of Salomon and Esther Carlebach . For some time he was chairman of the Agudat Jisra'el in Hamburg . In 1930 he immigrated to Palestine and briefly studied at the Yeschiwa Merkas HaRaw Kook founded by Abraham Isaak Kook . He was then Chasan (cantor) in Me'a She'arim , a district of Jerusalem . However, he returned to Germany and completed a law degree at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , where he obtained a doctorate . After his return to Palestine he received 1,936 first admission as a lawyer and opened his own office in Jerusalem the following year.

Since Michal Semora was divorced, he was not allowed to marry her in Israel and had to do so in April 1966 in New York. The prohibition of marriage refers to a passage in Leviticus of Moses that forbids men who are Kohanim from marrying divorced women.

After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he was appointed head of the Legislative Department in the Ministry of Justice and soon afterwards became a prosecutor. In 1949 he was appointed director general of the Ministry of Justice and a year later he was appointed attorney general and held this office until 1960. In this position he made important decisions: he brought charges against Malchiel Grünwald, whose statements led to the beginning of the trial against Rudolf Kasztner , and he gave instructions not to punish homosexual intercourse, although the laws from the British mandate do so (until 1988 ) provided.

On June 25, 1952, he was appointed as the successor to Dov Yosef by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion in addition to his office as Attorney General and Minister of Justice , although he was non-party and not a member of the Knesset . He held this office until December 24, 1952 and was then replaced by Pinchas Rosen . From 1954 to 1976 he was visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , and from 1956 to 1969 visiting professor at Tel Aviv University .

In 1960 he became a judge at the Supreme Court (Beit haMishpat ha'Elyon), of which he was a member until his retirement in 1981. At times he was also Vice President of the Supreme Court. Many of his most notable decisions as a judge were minority opinions on human rights issues . In one case, he disagreed with the Supreme Court's majority opinion, which denied an extremist Arab party the right to run for the Knesset. His point of view was later used in the reverse context when the Jewish extremist and Rabbi Meir Kahane was banned from running for the Knesset. In one of his last minority opinions in 1980, Cohn argued against the government's right to expel Palestinian activists from Gaza and the West Bank .

Cohn was Israel's representative on the UN Human Rights Council and a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration . He was also a member of the "T'hila" movement, which campaigned for secularism in Israel.

In 1980 he was awarded the State of Israel's highest distinction, the Israel Prize , for his services . In addition, he received honorary doctorates from several American universities, such as Georgetown University .

Fonts (selection)

literature

  • Cohn, Haim Hermann , in: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (eds.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economics, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 113
  • Cohn, Haim , in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1972, Volume 5, Col. 690

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ on the death of Chaim Cohn's New York Times
  2. ↑ Escape from Moses . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1966 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Middle Israel. Oy gay! Jerusalem Post , November 9, 2006
  4. ↑ Chaim Cohn, 91; High Court Justice in Israel, Champion of Rights . Los Angeles Times , April 11, 2002
personal data
SURNAME Cohn, Chaim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohn, Chaim Herman (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli politician (non-party)
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 2002
Place of death Jerusalem