Avishai was born in Kabri, a kibbutz in northern Israel, and he has both Spanish-Jewish, Greek-Jewish and Polish-Jewish ancestry. He grew also up in a musical family at Motza and Beit Zayit near Jerusalem until the age of six, when his family moved to nearby Shoeva. And like many great jazz-player so did he began to play piano before he was 10-years old. But for some reason so was it more fun to play bas. So he chached over to the bass guitar when  he was 14 after he had heard Jaco Pastorius. Whose music was introduced to Cohen by a music teacher in St Louis, Missouri, where he had moved with his family as a teenager.