:: Amram Scholar Series

Thought-Provoking Programs for the WHC Community

The Amram Scholar Series offers a stimulating program of free lectures throughout the year in which world-renowned speakers, authors, scholars, political leaders, policy analysts, and theologians share their perspectives on timely issues or their research into history.

Programming in this 55th year since the founding of the series will continue on January 24th at 10:30 a.m., when we present Anne & Emmett, a deeply moving one-act play by Janet Langhart Cohen. This production is dedicated to the memory of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the playwright, who advocates for issues of race and reconciliation.

Mrs. Langhart Cohen’s play is based on an imaginary conversation between one of the world’s most recognized Holocaust victims, 15-year-old Anne Frank, and a black boy named Emmett Till, who at age 14 was murdered by racists in Mississippi. The play premiered to a sold-out audience at George Washington University last June.

The Prime Timers and Empty Nesters will be hosting a luncheon with Mrs. Langhart Cohen after the program. All congregants are invited to the luncheon at a cost of $15 per person. To make reservations for lunch or the free show, please contact Madge Novel at Temple: 202-895-6314 or mnovel@whctemple.org

A German Jew who died of typhus at the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, Anne Frank later gained international renown through publication of the beautifully written diary in which she had recorded her feelings in the years her family spent hiding in Amsterdam during the Holocaust. Emmet Till was visiting Mississippi from his home in Chicago in 1955, when he was brutally attacked for whistling at a white woman. The sham trial in which an all-white jury swiftly acquitted his murderers became a signal event in the history of the civil rights movement.

Mrs. Langhart Cohen is a widely respected television and print journalist and author who, with her husband, former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, wrote Love in Black and White. “Early on in my professional life I was privileged to meet and be mentored by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” she said, discussing Washington Hebrew’s production of her play. “To have Anne & Emmett performed as a tribute to Dr. King, who devoted and gave his life to issues of race relations, is a humbling personal honor for me and for the entire Anne & Emmett company.”

As part of the production, violinist and composer Joshua Coyne, who has appeared in solo recitals and concerts at the Kennedy Center, the Baltimore Lyric Opera House, and other major venues, will perform from the original score that he composed for Anne & Emmett. 

The Amram Scholar Series thanks the Congregation’s Marcella Rittner Scholar Series Fund and the Ethel and Joseph D. Blatt Memorial Lecture Endowment Fund for support of this special program.

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Kicking off our Spring Semester on March 7th, author Bruce Feiler will return to the Amram Series to discuss his latest book, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story. The Temple Journal and website will provide details on this event and future dynamic offerings.

As always, your presence and probing questions provide the essential catalyst for challenging dialogue. We also encourage you to recommend lecturers or topics, to assist at book sales and author-signings, and to help arrange program publicity.