Biography

Elizabeth Passman Cohn, Jewish community activist, was born in 1913, in Charter Oak, Iowa, to Sam and Rose Passman. Soon after her birth, she moved with her parents and three siblings to Sioux City, Iowa, where her father worked as a broom manufacturer. Elizabeth Passman attended Central High School in Sioux City, Iowa, and graduated in 1930. In 1936 she married Elmer Cohn and moved to Waterloo, Iowa. Elizabeth Cohn, a housewife and mother of two, was active in civic as well as local and national Jewish organizations. She was a public speaker and an advocate for the empowerment of Jewish women. She was president of the Sons of Jacob Synagogue and a lifelong member of Hadassah and the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism. In her role as national board member of the Women’s League, Cohn organized an annual Women’s League conference in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1963. After Elmer Cohn’s death in 1983, she married Samuel Epstein. She died July 15, 2006, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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