Rabbi Seymour J. OChen, of Chicago, Illinois, was elected president of the Synagogue Council of America, at the closing plenary session today of the organizational year. He succeeds Rabbi Uri Miller of Baltimore who served as president for two one-year terms. He is the first Midwestern rabbi to be selected to this post.
Rabbi Cohen, age 43, was born in New York and had occupied pulpits in New York and Pittsburgh before being called to Chicago in 1960. He has served as secretary of the Rabbinical Assembly and vice-chairman of the National Conference on Religion and Race. He is a member of the American Medical Association’s Committee on Medicine and Religion, a director of the National Safety Council and is on the National Executive Council of the Zionist Organization of America. He holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh.
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