Sig Cohen · 2010 Honoree

Sig Cohen has lived on Capitol Hill with his wife, Susan, since 1989 when they returned from five and a half years in London with the U.S. Foreign Service. Sig says that London was “the jewel in the crown” of embassy assignments but the decision to settle here was “one of the best…we ever made.” After a professional life spent moving from city to city and country to country, he has relished becoming part of the community here; serving his neighbors has become his second career. 

As far back as when he was a student at Cincinnati’s highly regarded Walnut Hills public high school, Sig has been interested in the interaction of people from different backgrounds. There he joined Fellowship House, an organization he calls “radical for its time” (the early fifties), that sought to increase understanding among Christian and Jewish and black and white students. After college at the University of Pennsylvania and two years in the Army, Sig met his wife Susan who shared his dream of representing and serving the United States overseas. He went to the University of Chicago for a Master’s Degree in International Relations and joined the Foreign Service in 1963 (and was sworn in by Edward R. Murrow, the noted journalist who was then head of the United States Information Agency). Assigned first to Lahore, Bangladesh, where his son, Eric, was born and then to Calcutta, where his daughter, Risa, was born Sig traveled throughout eastern India making presentations about American society. Other posts included Hamburg and Bonn, Germany and London, where Sig was press attaché and spokesman for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Here on the Hill, Sig has sought out opportunities to work with people from a variety of racial and economic backgrounds in organizations addressing child welfare and homelessness. He was among the founders of the South Washington/West of the River Family Strengthening Collaborative and is active on the Board of the Capitol Hill Group Ministry, which brings together representatives of Hill congregations to assist individuals and families who are homeless or in danger of losing their home. For three years he has helped organize the Group Ministry’s inter-faith Thanksgiving service held each November in a different house of worship. For fourteen years Sig, a trained family and child protection mediator, was a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate for children in the D.C. court system. 

Raised on what he calls “light weight” Reform Judaism, Sig decided that he wanted to be more engaged with his faith so in 1999 he and Susan began inviting friends and neighbors into their home for monthly Friday night Shabbat services and potluck dinners. What began small has become the Hill Havurah, an independent, lay-led, family-centered Jewish community. It now meets at Christ Our Shepherd Church, has more than a hundred members and sponsors a wide range of activities including Yavneh on the Hill, a religious education program for children, High Holiday services, and an annual community Passover Seder. In addition, the Hill Havurah purchased its own two-hundred year old Torah and is preparing eight girls to read from it at their Bat Mitzvahs. Sig continues to serve on its Steering Committee but is thrilled to see young families taking up leadership of the Havurah.

Sig is proud of his family. His son Eric lives in San Diego with his children Kyle and Erica; and his daughter Risa lives in Minneapolis with her husband and son, Luke.