Jacob Raphael Cohen (1738 – September 9, 1811) was a Jewish minister in England, Canada, and the United States.
He is believed to have been born on the Barbary Coast, but was educated was educated in London where he became a mohel. In 1777 or 1778, the Spanish-Portuguese congregation of London, Shaar Hashomayim, was asked by the Shearith Israel congregation in Montreal to recommend a spiritual leader, and they suggested Cohen. On February 13, 1778 Cohen was engaged for three years to act as shochet, hazzan, and Hebrew teacher. The engagement was made in London on behalf of the Montreal congregation by the merchant Hyam Myers.
Cohen arrived at Montreal in 1779, making him the first minister to a Jewish community in the province of Quebec. His congregation consisted largely of the families of successful merchants who had come to the new British colony during and immediately after the conquest from England, the American colonies, Barbados, Jamaica, and Curaçao.
Cohen extended his services to Jewish communities outside Montreal: at Trois-Rivières he performed the circumcision ceremonies for two of Aaron Hart's sons, Benjamin in 1779 and Asher Alexander in 1782. The Jewish communities were small, however, numbering only 20 families in Montreal and five in Trois-Rivières and Berthier combined, and in the three years of his ministry Cohen performed only four circumcisions and two marriages. In 1781 Cohen made his own translation of an ancient and complex halachic document, the Aramaic ketubah, probably not rendered into English previously.
Cohen's incumbency appears to have been satisfactory to his congregation and peaceful, until his last year when he complained of not having been fully paid for the term of his engagement. The congregation split, a minority supporting Cohen, who in September 1782 sued Lucius Levy Solomons, apparently the parnas of the congregation. Cohen won his case in the Court of Common Pleas but the decision was reversed on a technicality in the Court of Appeals on May 6, 1784.
Cohen had departed for England in 1782 but found himself stranded in New York City, where his ship had been diverted to repatriate British troops. The Jewish community there was temporarily without a minister, their hazzan, Gershom Mendes Seixas, a supporter of the revolution, having fled to Philadelphia. Cohen filled the position of hazzan until Seixas's return in 1784, at which time he left to replace Seixas at the Mikveh Israel Synagogue of Philadelphia. Cohen died at Philadelphia in 1811 and was replaced as hazzan by his son, Abraham Haim.