Francis Lyon Cohen

Cohen was born above the family shop on the High Street in Aldershot in Hampshire in 1862, the eldest son of Russian-born and naturalised-British subject Woolf Henry Cohen, marine store dealer, pawnbroker and later a tobacco manufacturer, and his Polish-born wife Harriett, née Phillips, the daughter of Aldershot businessman Moses Phillips, a watchmaker and jeweller.

[1] With B. L. Mosely he was the author of A Handbook of Synagogue Music for Congregational Singing (1889) and, with David M. Davis, of The Voice Of Prayer And Praise (1899 and 1914), affectionally known as ‘The Blue Book’.

Colonel Albert Goldsmid brought this idea to fruition in 1895 with the formation of the Jewish Lads' Brigade with which Cohen served as staff chaplain from 1896.

The Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue were responsible for the religious welfare and spiritual needs of Jews in public bodies and it decided to include serving members of the British Forces in its remit and applied to the War Office for the appointment of a Jewish military chaplain.

This request was granted in 1892 when Cohen, then the minister of the Borough Synagogue, became the first Jewish chaplain to the British Army; following this Lord Rothschild gave him a letter of introduction to General Sir Evelyn Wood, who was in charge of the Camp at Aldershot[9] and who appointed Cohen as chaplain to Jewish troops at Aldershot.

[10] Having been born and brought up in Aldershot at a time when the town was rapidly growing due to the arrival of the British Army Cohen was already very familiar with military life.

Wishing for a new challenge in 1904 Cohen was appointed as Chief Minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, the mother congregation of Jewry in Australia.

Before leaving Britain for this new role Cohen had to attain full rabbinical qualifications so that he could lead the Sydney Beth Din but he did not find it easy to gain them as obstacles were placed in his way, perhaps out of jealousy at his previous achievements or perhaps out of suspicion that in some areas of his ministry he had not been a strict traditionalist.

He worked for such philanthropic institutions as the Chevra Kadisha, the Sir Moses Montefiore Home for the aged and the local branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association; he was also involved in the Jewish Literary and Debating Society of Sydney.

During World War I he was vice-president of the Universal Service League and encouraged Jews to enlist in the Australian militias and strongly supported conscription.