On Nov. 28, 2013, worlds will collide when the first day of Hanukkah falls on Thanksgiving Day. Due to a rare confluence of the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars, this is the last time this will happen for about 75,000 years! No doubt by then the Jewish people will have successfully colonized most of the galaxy,…
Dear Helen, I am 54 and recently reconnected with my first true love on Facebook. We were a couple in high school and would probably have gotten married except for my mother’s interference. Insert vivid fights with her, and bad relationships for me, until I finally met my husband, who reminded me of my first…
Yom Kippur is always a challenging day, although I am not sure that all the reasons I find it challenging are the traditional ones. The rigors are many: fasting, going to the neighborhood shul for Kol Nidre, Yizkor and Ne’ila while trying to keep an eye on my kids, who, like most other secular children,…
I like to joke that Israeli customer service is an oxymoron. If you’re used to an American attitude that “The Customer is Always Right,” you’re going to have to do some major attitude adjustment while in the Holy Land. Don’t get me wrong – I do love living here. I just don’t like the service…
Samuel Barnett, a 27-year-old Portlander, served for two years in the Israeli military as a special forces paratrooper stationed in the West bank and on the Syrian and Lebanon borders. Barnett always felt a strong calling to Israel, but he never dreamed he would end up in the elite 202 Battalion of the paratrooper unit…
As one of the four pilot sites of the national Israel advocacy training program developed over the past year, Portland is poised to put the intensive preparation to the test. This spring about 20 Portlanders attended three programs presented by Israel Action Network Deputy Managing Director David Dabscheck and his assistant Noam Gilboord. The training…
