Leopold Cohn established a storefront church called Brownsville Mission to the Jews on Rockaway Avenue. With a move he changed the name to Williamsburg Mission to the Jews.
The storefront changed location in Brooklyn at least five or six times: 201 Van Buren Street; 331 Rockaway; 13 Manhattan; 235 S 4th Street; and 141 Hewes Street (as the Home for Jewish Believers).
The mission eventually expanded its scope and became the American Board of Missions to the Jews. Today, it continues under the moniker Chosen People Ministries.
Born in 1862 in Berezna, Hungary, Cohn studied with Hasidic rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum. Then, he attended the non-Hasidic Hatam Sofer’s Yeshiva in Presburg, Slovakia. Ordained as a rabbi at age eighteen, he practiced as rabbi in 3 small communities. In his teaching he started to read the Scriptures about the coming Messiah. Puzzled, he asked a nearby rabbi for help. The unnamed rabbi told Cohn that America was the place to find answers to his questions.
“But,” said the rabbi, “my advice is that you go to America. There you will meet plenty of people who will tell you more about the Messiah.” Cohn arrived in America in 1892.
After he came to an end for his search for the Messiah in New York City, Cohn became a Christian pastor, started the Williamsburg Mission and edited a journal called Chosen People.
Mary C. Sherburne, a Gentile volunteer, wrote a description of Cohn’s operations. She noted that “Cohn preached on Saturday afternoons and Thursday nights” at an auditorium for 160 people. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday he preached in English. He even enlisted his children to distribute tracts, “Joseph started at nine years old.” The son would lecture at churches to ask for donations and on his way home would immediately buy food because supplies were so low. Cohn spent free evenings and days going door to door to talk about his faith. Cohn was indefatigable in his efforts to help fellow Jews and spread his mission.
In 1896, Cohn opened a headquarters and second branch of Williamsburg mission. He also started a popular clinic with physicians of a variety of faiths. Cohn’s success in persuading fellow Jews toward Jesus as the Messiah also brought opposition. In his 1899 “The Apostate of Chego-Chegg” Abraham Cahan, the editor of The Jewish Forward, portrayed contemporary Jewish Christians as lonely, miserable, restless and destroyed. A Jewish Christian literary group on the Lower East Side launched responses in books, plays, articles, and debates..
In the 1900, Cohn started a Russian Jewish meeting. One contemporary remembered, “One Saturday afternoon, father came home and said that he had just passed the missionary store on grand Street. ‘They are doing good business these days,’ he said, ‘as I passed, the door opened and I saw the place crowded with people.’”
For more on Messianic Jews read:
Searching for the Messiah in New York City
National survey shows Jews leaving Judaism, assimilating, becoming Christians or “Nones”
