Martin Samuel Cohen was born and raised in New York City, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude from the City University of New York, and where he was ordained as rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1978 and then awarded a Ph.D. in the history of ancient Judaism in 1982. The subsequent recipient of post-doctoral fellowships at the Hebrew University and at Harvard University, Rabbi Cohen has also lectured on the history of religion at Hunter College of the City University of New York and taught Bible and Talmud both at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and at the Institute for Jewish Studies attached to the University of Heidelberg in Germany. After serving pulpits in British Columbia and southern California, Rabbi Cohen returned to New York in 2002 to become the rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York, from which position he retired in 2024 to devote himself to writing, editing, and translating.

In addition to his work as teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Cohen is an author and has published two scientific studies in the history of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism, five novels and four books of essays, including the Hebrew-language Sefer Ha-ikarim Li-v’nei Z’manenu, as well as his own 2004 edition of the Book of Psalms, called Our Haven and Our Strength: The Book of Psalms in New Translation. More recently, Rabbi Cohen has published the two-volume prayer book Siddur Tzur Yisrael, Zot Nechemati for the house of mourning, a children’s book called Riding the River of Peace, and The Boy on the Door on the Ox, an exploration of the relationship between Mishnah study and service in the congregational rabbinate. From 2000 through 2013, he served as chairperson of the editorial board of the quarterly journal, Conservative Judaism. In addition, Rabbi Cohen has served as senior editor of three major Rabbinical Assembly publications: the 2012 landmark volume defining Conservative Jewish life, The Observant Life: The Wisdom of Conservative Judaism for Contemporary Jews; Pirkei Avot Lev Shalem, which came out in 2018; and the Rabbinical Assembly’s 2022 edition of Megillat Esther, featuring Rabbi Cohen’s commentary and translation.

A collection of short stories, To Speak the Truth: Stories 2011-2021, came out in 2021. Most recently, Rabbi Cohen has published Spiritual Integrity: On the Possibility of Steadfast Honestly in Faith and Worship (Hamilton Books, 2020), a new novel called Jerusalem Ghosts (Wipf and Stock, 2021), and a Hebrew-language work, Sefer Halev Ha-rachav V’ha-mitracheiv (Amazon Books, 2022).

An avid amateur flutist and a great lover of dogs, Rabbi Cohen is married to Joan Freeman Cohen and has three children, three children-in-law, and five grandchildren. Chumash Kol Ha-tor is the culmination of his lifetime of work teaching and preaching the text of the Torah to people eager to grow intellectually and spiritually through the contemplation of Scripture.