Calendar

Mah Jongg for Beginners

Learn to play this ancient game. It will give your mind a workout!
Tuesday Mornings
April 16 – May 14
10:30 am – 12:30 pm, CG301
Cost: $100. Members: $85.
Register: oregonjcc.org/registration

Mah Jongg for Intermediate Players

Take your game to the next level!
Tuesday Afternoons
April 16 – May 14
1:30 – 3:30 pm, CG302
Cost: $100. Members: $85.
Register: oregonjcc.org/registration

Yom HaZikaron – A Community-Wide Commemoration

Please join us as we honor those who have given their lives for the State of Israel.

Tuesday, May 7, 8:00 pm at the MJCC. Free and open to the community.

Chai Baby + PJ Library Indoor Playground

Join us on the second Wednesdays of every month from September to June for Chai Baby Indoor Playground, with kosher snacks, storytelling, friends and fun!

For parents/caregivers and their children up to five years old.

Please mark your calendar for our 2019 dates, held on the second Wednesdays each month:
January 9
February 13
March 13
April 10
May 8
June 12

Free and open to the community.

In partnership with PJ Library, Chai Baby, and Portland Jewish Academy.

From Warsaw to Baltimore: Escaping Nazi and Contemporary United States Ghettos

Amanda recently presented her thesis entitled From Warsaw to Baltimore: Escaping Nazi and Contemporary United States Ghettos. This research focuses on an integrative approach which reveals largely overlooked parallels between the two. By focusing on processes and structures, she explores the exclusionary practices that make ghettos a mechanism of oppression and mass violence of the 20th century. While noting important differences, she examines the evolution of the term ghetto, ideas and ideology about those who reside in ghettos; policies that ensure inhabitants of the ghetto remain in them; and, finally, struggles of those who escape the ghetto to find support or acceptance needed to maintain life outside the ghetto.

This is part of the OJMCHE series of informal lunchtime conversations. Bring a lunch or buy a lunch in Lefty’s Cafe and join us in the museum’s auditorium for a lively give and take as we share and explore ideas, experience, and expertise.

Since the shootings in Pittsburgh, there have been highly publicized tensions between African American and Jewish American figures. But why is there a special historical relationship between blacks and Jews? What are the causes that unite and what divides?

“African Americans and Jewish Americans have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict, and—since the 1970s—has been an area of significant academic research. Cooperation during the Civil Rights Movement was strategic and significant, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The relationship has also featured conflict and controversy related to such topics as the Black Power movement, Zionism, affirmative action, and the role of American and Caribbean-based Jews in the Atlantic slave trade.” (Wikipedia)

Professor Ellen Eisenberg will delve into these and other questions in this part of Intersections.

Ellen Eisenberg has taught in the History Department since 1990, and holds the Dwight and Margaret Lear Chair in American History. She teaches courses on American and African American history since the Civil War, American social history, American Jewish history, American immigration history, the 1960s, Reconstruction, and a research seminar called History in the Archives. Several of her courses serve as electives for the American Ethnic Studies program.

Ellen Eisenberg’s research centers on the history of American immigrant and ethnic communities, particularly American Jewish communities. Since the mid-1990s, she has focused on Jews in the Pacific West, with an emphasis on relationships between Jews and other minority ethnic groups. She has written four monographs on Jews in the West, as well as publishing a number of articles and book chapters. The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII (2008), was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her a two-volume history of Jews in Oregon was published in 2015 and 2016. Courses she teaches at Willamette University: Nation of Immigrants, American Immigration History, African American History, 1865-present, Topics in American History, 1865-present, History in the Archives, American Jewish History, and History Workshop: Race and Ethnicity in the American West.

Dr. Eisenberg is the author of The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950-2010 (2016), Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians 1849-1950 (2015), Jews of the Pacific Coast: Reinventing Community on America’s Edge (co-authored with Ava Kahn and Bill Toll, 2010), The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII (2008), and Jewish Agricultural Colonies in New Jersey, 1882-1920 (1995).

Mark Twain said it best when he said, “no one has an uninteresting life!” This workshop is an opportunity to explore your life and write your stories. Dorothy Dworkin, an experienced author, columnist and writing coach, will offer prompts and suggestions to get you started on writing your stories. She will help you organize your memoir with noncritical feedback from your fellow writers and from her years of experience facilitating the writing process. No experience necessary, only a desire to share your experiences with family, friends and fellow “memoirists.” Class size is limited to 12.
Thursdays
May 2 – 30
11:00 am – 12:30 pm, CG306
Cost: $50.
Register at oregonjcc.org/registration

Seniors and young families enjoy an inter-generational celebration of stories and songs each Thursday.

Join Kim Schneiderman for this weekly inter-generational story hour for young families with music, PJ Library books, and the residents of Cedar Sinai Park.

Nosh + Drash with Rabbi Eve Posen

A monthly discussion covering a wide range of topics that draw on our experiences.
Topics: TBA
Thursdays, May 9 and June 13
3:00 – 4:00 pm
Free and open to the community.
In partnership with Congregation Neveh Shalom