Cogan, Nathan Collection

Nathan F. Cogan biography written 5/2021 by him

Nathan F. Cogan, Ph.D., a native of Bath, Maine who was born in 1937, graduated with honors from Morse High in 1955. He holds an M.A. and doctorate from UC Berkeley and his B.A. from San Francisco State University. At Berkeley, he majored in Renaissance Studies in the English Department. In 1955-56 he attended Bowdoin College for one year before moving to Oregon and studied at Reed College, Oregon for a year and a half. In 1958–60 he served in the U.S.Army—with one year in Korea. (Earlier, he became a Bar Mitzvah in Bath in 1950.)

At Portland State University (PSU), in Oregon, where he is professor emeritus, he taught Shakespeare and Holocaust Studies. Cogan has held a Fulbright Fellowship to Lithuania; an NEH grant and an OCH grant. He has published in Renaissance Studies, on Malamud’s The Fixer in an Oregon journal, and in Northwestern’s Lessons & Legacies series on the Holocaust. With help from son David, his Holocaust-centered video Last Remnants of Lithuanian Jewry (1994) was produced by the Magnes Museum, Berkeley.

He is currently active in J Street nationally and has been a member of Havurah Shalom, Portland, Oregon’s reconstructionist shul. In Oregon he is a major supporter of the Oregon Jewish Museum, Jewish Family & Child Service, and Cedar Sinai Park (Portland’s Jewish retirement center). He is also a primary supporter of four projects at Portland State, including the Holocaust & Genocide Studies; the MFA program in Creative Writing; an English Department faculty summer enhancement project; and since 2007 PSU’s annual Sara Cogan Memorial lectureship—named after his late wife—which now has NYT staffer Michelle Goldberg on the docket. Earlier speakers: Ruth Messinger, AJWS; Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard (a Bath grandson and co-author of The Death of Democracy); the late folksinger Debbie Friedman; and Yale’s Timothy Snyder.

When he completed “A Memoir of the Immigrant Jews of Bath, 1885-1960,” still available on the Internet, Beth Israel sponsored a reunion in September 2009 which attracted an audience of over 100, many of them grandchildren of the original signers of the 1919 charter that formed the synagogue. He also read a paper on the immigrant’s 2nd generation at Colby College’s Maine Jewish History Conference (2011) directed by Professor David Freidenreich.

Cogan is the father of three sons: David, Jonathan, and Daniel, and grandfather of five grandchildren. His parents, the late Morris and Dora Petlock Cohen of Bath, were immigrants from Lithuania. The sole survivor of their seven children, Cogan is now completing a personal memoir. [The Cohens lived at 10 Old South Place, 1920-1956; his father Morris Cohen, 1890-1946, was the hazzan (cantor) in Bath from 1914-1945.]

Cogan deeply values his collaboration with Fred Weinberg, Woolwich, the archivist of the Jews of Bath (1865–). Cogan also acknowledges the Bath Rotary Club for its annual 8th grade essay contest: in 1951 it sponsored his first historical essay, one on the 1854 burning down of the Old South Church by a Know Nothing Mob. (Two extant portraits of that event are still housed in the Patten Free Library, Bath.) A Memoir of Bath (digital audio recording from Beth Israel Congregation Reunion, Sunday, September 13, 2009) "A Memoir of Bath, Maine: Recollections of My Family and The First & Second Generation Jewish Immigrants, 1886-1960.” Nathan Cogan is the son of Morris and Dora Petlock Cohen. Morris Cohen was one of the founders of Beth Israel Congregation (originally, Base Isroall) in Bath, Maine. He was trained as a cantor and served for many years as a spiritual leader for the congregation.

For more information, see the Finding Aid.

Items From the Cogan, Nathan F. Collection

A Memoir of Bath (born-digital text file)
"A Memoir of Bath, Maine: Recollections of My Family and The First & Second Generation Jewish Immigrants, 1886-1960." Nathan Cogan is the son of Morris and Dora Petlock Cohen. Morris Cohen was one of the founders of Beth Israel Congregation (originally, Base Isroall) in Bath, Maine. He was trained as a cantor and served for many years as a spiritual leader for the congregation.

"A Review of The Conference on Bath Jewish-Christian Relations, c. 1920-1970" August 12, 2016 by Nathan Cogan
Nathan Cogan is the son of Morris and Dora Petlock Cohen. Morris Cohen was one of the founders of Beth Israel Congregation (originally, Base Isroall) in Bath, Maine. He was trained as a cantor and served for many years as a spiritual leader for the congregation.

Bath's Jews, 1920–1975 - Coping with Modernity by Nathan Cogan
Nathan Cogan is the son of Morris and Dora Petlock Cohen. Morris Cohen was one of the founders of Beth Israel Congregation (originally, Base Isroall) in Bath, Maine. He was trained as a cantor and served for many years as a spiritual leader for the congregation.

Obituary and Memorial to Morris H. Cohen
Morris Cohen was one of the founders of Beth Israel Congregation (originally, Base Isroall) in Bath, Maine. He was trained as a cantor in Lithuania and served for many years as a spiritual leader for the congregation. The obituary is from the June 26, 1946 edition of the Bath Daily Times.

Marriage Officiant Certificate of Morris H. Cohen
Morris Cohen was one of the founders of Beth Israel Congregation (originally, Base Isroall) in Bath, Maine. He was trained as a cantor in Lithuania and served for many years as a spiritual leader for the congregation. This document was issued on April 12,1916 by the State of Maine to "Moses Cohen" of Bath, Maine.