Katie Elliot, lead teacher at The Gan-Garrett Jewish Preschool in Vancouver, WA, is sold on the importance of Jewish education – even though she herself is not Jewish. Judaism, she says, brings so much meaning to early childhood education. “The children have opportunities to practice compassion, kindness and charity,” says Elliot, whose master’s thesis focused…
It seems like summer just arrived here in the Pacific Northwest, yet another school year is just around the corner. Each year Multnomah County Health Department and other community organizations gear up to support children, families, schools and communities to keep kids healthy in school so that they can learn and thrive. Supporting kids in…
Adults enroll in diverse education programs to enhance their professional life, enrich their cultural literacy, explore new interests or simply to keep their minds active and growing. The Internet has created a new avenue for learning at all those levels. “The changing nature of work in the 21st century requires a continuous cycle of training…
Parents of eighth-graders take note – fall is the time to consider where your son or daughter will attend high school next year. “High school is not that much different from college admissions,” says Meade Thayer, executive director of Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools. “Be aware of timelines each school has and make sure…
Portland Jewish Academy Principal Merrill Hendin is looking forward to a banner year. “We still have enrollment coming in, and we are in a very good spot,” she said, just days after returning from a mid-summer vacation. Portland’s flagship Jewish school will have about 190 kindergarten through 8th-grade students when classes start after Labor Day,…
Rachel Bloom was teaching special ed but she was troubled. She’d grown attached to her high school students and wondered what was next for them. She wanted them to have happy, productive lives, but when her students with developmental disabilities turned 18 and graduated, most faced a grim shortage of vocational and recreational options. She…
Synagogues, schools and special-needs providers – to me, these are each an integral part of community. This issue of Oregon Jewish Life features special sections on synagogues and schools. Oregon has seen an explosion in options for both in recent decades. We also devote our Through the Ages section to looking at ways the community…
Rose Schnitzer Manor at Cedar Sinai Park will present “Epicurean Delights,” a series of lectures exploring the guilty pleasures of some of our favorite foods and beverages. All lectures are at 6:45 pm Tuesdays in Zidell Hall, 6140 SW Boundary St., Portland. Tastings will follow each lecture on the terrace. A goal of this program…
When the first Jews arrived in Oregon in the 1850s, congregations weren’t far behind. In the more than 150 years since, synagogues have multiplied, grown and evolved to meet the ever-changing spiritual, life-cycle and community needs of an increasingly dispersed and diverse population. The first Jewish pioneers arrived in the state in the 1850s and…
We go through many changes during our lives. There are births and deaths, marriages and divorces, youth and maturity. Old habits die hard, and bad habits die even harder. When our son was 2, we moved to Barcelona, Spain, for my husband’s job. It was an incredible experience to be completely immersed in the local…
