The Havurah invites the community to a Sunset Dinner at Grizzly Peak Winery in Ashland; The Best of Both Worlds, on Thursday, August 27 at 6:00 PM with light jazz by the Paul Schmeling Trio. Ashland Gourmet will provide appetizers from the Middle Eastern kitchen with delights such as tabouli, hummus, baba ganoush and more, followed by an entrée from the Spanish Sephardic tradition of Chicken Marbella and dessert of fresh fruit and baklava. The all inclusive price per person, which includes the wonderful wines of Grizzly Peak, is $60, and tables of eight can be reserved for $440. All reservations must be made in advance no later than August 19 by calling 541-488-7716. The event is a benefit for the Havurah.
We invite you to join us on Friday, Dec. 30, to welcome Shabbat, spread the light of the Chanukah candles, and share our feelings, fears, and hopes for the difficult times we are facing as a country. For those of us who came together on the Sunday after the election, it was a powerful expression of community, and there have been requests to identify some next steps. It continues to feel premature to launch a specific action plan. Instead, it seems more appropriate to gather in community, listen to how we are doing, and continue conversations about our hopes and fears about areas such as immigrants and refugees, poverty and homelessness, climate change, equity, and gun control.
We will begin by lighting the Chanukah and Shabbat candles, sing some songs, and then spend our time talking and listening. There will not be a formal Friday night service.
Philip Roth and R.B. Kitaj became good friends in London during the ’80s, and the painter influenced Roth in many ways, especially for the title character of Roth’s greatest novel, Sabbath’s Theater. Roger Porter, Professor of English and Humanities, Emeritus, Reed College focuses his lecture on Roth and Kitaj’s shared attitudes, or perhaps those of their characters and their painterly subjects, regarding desire, ecstasy, and the inevitable demise. The title of the lecture is a paraphrase of a quote by the protagonist Sabbath on the last page of Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater.