Cohen, Ezra

A pawnbroker, proud of his vocation. "If an amiable self-satisfaction is the mark of earthly bliss, Solomon in all his glory was a pitiable mortal compared with Mr. Cohen--clearly one of those persons who, being in excellent spirits about themselves, are willing to cheer strangers by letting them know it... Deronda, not in a cheerful mood, was rahsly pronouncing this Ezra Cohen to be the most unpoetic Jew he had ever met with in books or life; his phraseology was as little as possible like that of the Old Testament; and no shadow of a Suffering Race distinguished his vulgarity of soul from that of a prosperous pink-and-white huckster of the purest English lineage." Daniel Deronda at first mistakes him for Mirah's brother, Ezra, for whome he is searching, and so introduces himself to the Cohen family. He and his family are kind-hearted, commonplace Jews, who care for Mordecai (the other Ezra Cohen) in his illness and poverty.

<em>Daniel Deronda</em>

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