Rabbi Michael Cohen

Rabbi Michael Margaretten Cohen is the Director for Community Relations for the Friends of the Arava Institute. He is also a faculty member of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Bennington College. He teaches courses on conflict resolution, the Bible, and the environment. Rabbi Cohen has been a Policy Advisor to the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, U.S. Department of State and a Speechwriter Adviser to the Office of the White House Speechwriters. He also has sat on the Advisory Board of the Middle East Peace Partnership (MEPPA) of USAID established by Congress. Rabbi Cohen is a long-time environmental activist who, while in high school, co-founded the first recycling center in Ewing, New Jersey in 1976. He graduated, with a B.A. in History, from the University of Vermont, where he also received the Paul Evans History Award for his honors paper on “Lenin’s Theory of Self-Determination and the Muslims of the Soviet Union.” In 1990 he graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and become the first full-time rabbi of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont. Since 1996, he has divided his time between Vermont and Kibbutz Ketura, Israel. Cohen, now the rabbi emeritus of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont is the author of numerous articles that have appeared in the Middle East and the United States. He has a regular Torah commentator in the Jerusalem Post as well as a regular opinion writer there. He is the author of “Einstein’s Rabbi: A Tale of Science and the Soul.” Cohen co-founded the Green Zionist Alliance. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Burr & Burton Academy, the Mount Equinox Preservation Trust, the Green Sabbath Project, KaTO Architecture, and the Jerusalem Peacebuilders. He is a recipient of the Eliav Sartawi Award for Middle East Journalism from the Search for Common Ground.