Who we are.

Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua Education Committee Chairperson

Lawrence A. Cohen, M.D., I prefer to be known as “Larry” was born in Jacksonville, FL on April 12, 1940. Understand, Jacksonville is in the northeast corner of Florida, just south of the Georgia border and not part of glitzy south Florida. Jacksonville in the 9140s and 50s was Deep South, a city where Jim Crow laws were in effect. Schools were segregated. Buses were segregated. Parks and water fountains were segregated. Yet, somehow, in this environment, my friends and I were able to see the injustice in 0ur community. Perhaps it was being raised in a Jewish minority community that gave light to the injustices around us.

After high school, I left Jacksonville for college, first at the University of Florida and the at the university of Pennsylvania. I then returned to the Deep South to attend medical school at Tulane in New Orleans. But by now, the late 50’s – early 60’s things were starting to change. I graduated medical school in 1965 and stayed on at Tulane for general surgical training. In 1968, my residency class welcomed Tulane’s and Charity Hospital’s first African-American physician to our program.

In 1970 I was sent for several months as a chief resident to a rural satellite Charity Hospital in Independence, LA. It was there that I found a sign in a closet that had been taken down when the hospital chose to integrate to accept Medicare funding. The sign defined the Jim Crow era’s segregated clinics. Somehow, I knew that sign should be preserved. The day would come when people would struggle to remember the cruelty of segregation. So, I wrapped the sign in paper – God forbid someone might see it and think of me as a segregationist – and kept it until late 2009 when I learned of the creation of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It now hangs in that museum.

After two years of service as a surgeon in the US Air Force, my family moved to San Antonio, TX, where we still live today. I first learned of Chautauqua and made my first vacation visit in 1997.

With annual summer vacations in western New York, we fell in love with the area and upon retirement from practice in 2007, we chose to spend our full summers in Chautauqua/Mayville. It was in 2010 I first heard Leigh-Anne Hendrick, who taught Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Chautauqua Lake Central School speak at a Sunday evening lecture sponsored by our Hebrew Congregation of Chautauqua. Leigh-Anne returned in 2014 to give an update on the program and that was when the Congregation’s Holocaust and Social Justice program was born. Sidney “Casey” Neuman proposed that the Congregation financially support a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC for the students enrolled in the school’s program.

My own involvement with the Hebrew Congregation began in 2012 when I was asked to join its board. As a practicing Jew, the Holocaust has always been the example of the worst possible social injustice and learning of the education program in Mayville, I was enthusiastic that we create the needed support to provide the proposed trip to DC. Dr. Len Katz, of Buffalo, chaired the Holocaust Education Committee and successfully raised the needed funds. \That first trip occurred in March 2017. Dr. Katz continued in his role and brought several important donors to support the program. In 2019 I became president of the Congregation and was asked to join the Education Committee that worked closely with Ms. Hendrick. Believing there was value for the students to visit the NMAAHC and using the “influence “of my gift to the museum, we arranged for the students to see both museums on the 2019 trip.

At the end of 2021, Dr. Katz chose to retire as chair of the committee and asked me to take over its leadership. I remain excited for the future relationship between the Congregation and the students in Chautauqua County’s schools. We are blessed by significant donors who see the importance of our involvement. I look forward to its further growth and development.

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Program Director

Leigh-Anne Hendrick is a high school social studies teacher with 24 years of classroom experience. Mrs. Hendrick has worked as a consultant with the United States Department of Education’s Teacher to Teacher training program and has presented both nationally and internationally. She has received training at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C, and in 2005 was named one of fifteen Museum Teacher Fellows in the United States. She has been awarded the Toby Ticktin Back Award for Holocaust Education and RIT’s Distinguished Teacher recognition.

Most recently, Mrs. Hendrick has been working to expand Holocaust and human rights education in Chautauqua County, a mission she is passionate about. She is also a co-founding director of the Chautauqua Country Summer Institute for Human Rights and Genocide Studies. In both programs she has been instrumental in developing teacher and student training programs to broaden and deepen understanding of the Holocaust, genocide, human rights and social justice. She strives to empower students and educators to take an active role in our shared humanity.

Associate Director

Emily Dorman is a high school English teacher with seventeen years of classroom experience. She has made social justice and human rights advocacy a focus in her classroom, and has been working with the program for the past fifteen years to lead Summer Institutes, a Brown Bag Lunch Speaker series and teacher workshops.

Director of Resources

Advocacy Consultant