## *Judah Cohen Sikly, or Judah Cohen Scali *Daniel Cohen de Azevedo, Haham of Amsterdam, died in 1822. The Mahamad of Amsterdam struggled to find a replacement. One of the promising candidates was one Juda Cohen Sikly – as his name was written in meetings of the Mahamad and in several underlying documents.There was one problem, Dutch law required that he underwent a rabbinical exam by “het Rabbinaal College van Examinatoren”, an institution that was established in 1815. Sikly agreed to submit to an exam. A request was addressed to the Dutch government to ask that Juda Cohen Sikly be admitted to a rabbinical exam, in April 1826. In September of that year, the request met with a positive approval, although the decision stated that this was an exceptional and one-time-only decision, and could not be interpreted as a precedent.Fate intervened, Juda Cohen Sikly died, in 1826 or 1827. The position of Haham remained vacant until 1900. In the meantime, several persons served as a stand-in.Juda Cohen Sikly was to be buried in Jerusalem, the Mahamad of Amsterdam agreed to pay for a gravestone and had prepared several concepts for a text. This is the one that they chose - see image.Michael Waas (thanks, Michael!) informs me that the text of this concept has the name written as Juda Cohen Scali.As always, questions remain: who was Judah Cohen Scali, did he have something to do with the Moroccan family of that name, did he publish, why was he considered fit for the Amsterdam rabbinate?