Calendar

Oct
7
Sun
JGSO: Jewish Life in Poland @ Congregation Ahavath Achim
Oct 7 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon invites you, your family and friends to its upcoming program “Jewish Life in Poland” by Avraham Groll.

Description: Part 1 (10th-15th centuries) will explore patterns of Jewish migration to Poland between the 10th-15th centuries. We will discuss when and why the major shifts happened, where the Jews settled and their involvement in the Poland’s development. This presentation is designed for beginners, and is not a workshop. Maps, pictures, and documents will be displayed. Handouts with further information and a bibliography will also be distributed.

Part 2 (16th-18th centuries) will explore patterns of Jewish migration to Poland between the 16th-18th centuries. We will discuss the “Golden Age of Polish Jewry,” the reaction to Shabtai Tzvi, and how the Jewish experience in Poland helped set the stage, in part, for the eventual rise of the Hasidic movement. This presentation is designed for beginners, and is not a workshop. Maps, pictures, and documents will be displayed. Handouts

Bio: Avraham Groll, the Director of JewishGen.org, is passionate about connecting people with their Jewish roots, and helping them experience what it means to be part of the Jewish people. Avraham holds an MBA from Montclair State University, an MA in Judaic Studies from Touro College, and a BS in Business Administration from Ramapo college, and spent two years studying at Yeshiva Ohr Yeruslahayim in Israel. He is a frequent lecturer on a variety of Jewish genealogical and historical topics.

Jan
9
Wed
Chai Baby + PJ Library Indoor Playground @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Jan 9 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

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.

Feb
13
Wed
Chai Baby + PJ Library Indoor Playground @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Feb 13 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

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.

Mar
12
Tue
MJCC Author Series @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Mar 12 @ 6:30 pm
MJCC Author Series
Join us for this thought-provoking program that will bring an exceptional line up of authors and special events to our community.
Guest: $8. Member Cost: $5.
Series Pass: $20. Member: $12.
Tuesday, March 12 at 6:30 pm
Mary Morris – Gateway to the Moon

From award-winning novelist and memoirist Mary Morris comes the story of a sleepy New Mexican community that must come to grips with a religious and political inheritance they never expected. Morris is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels The Jazz Palace, A Mother’s Love, and House Arrest, and of nonfiction, including the travel memoir classic “Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone.” She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in literature and the 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction.

Tuesday, March 19 at 6:30 pm
Mark Sarvas
A son learns more about his father than he ever could have imagined when a mysterious piece of art is unexpectedly restored to him. Of all the questions asked by Sarvas’s Memento Park – about family and identity, about art and history–a central, unanswerable predicament lingers: How do we move forward when the past looms unreasonably large? Sarvas is the author of Memento Park and Harry, Revised, which was published in more than a dozen countries. His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, Bookforum and many others.
Tuesday, March 26 at 6:30 pm
Michael David Lukas
The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a moving page-turner of a novel from acclaimed storyteller Michael David Lukas. This tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces–potent magic, forbidden love–that boldly attempt to bridge that divide. Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, which was a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and has been published in fifteen languages. A graduate of Brown University, he has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Mar
13
Wed
Chai Baby + PJ Library Indoor Playground @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Mar 13 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

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.

MJCC Author Series – Special Event with Mary Morris @ OSU Foundation
Mar 13 @ 4:00 pm
Author Mary Morris will read from her latest book, Gateway to the Moon, on Wednesday, March 13 at the OSU Foundation in Corvallis.

Her novel alternates between late medieval Spain and Portugal during the traumatic time of the Inquisition, and a very small town in New Mexico in 1992. The modern New Mexican characters are Catholics with peculiar habits. Nobody in town eats pork but they don’t know why. It is likely they are the descendants of conversos, Jews who converted during the Spanish Inquisition. The story weaves a connecting thread from the Iberian Peninsula to Mexico City and then on to the original settlers who moved into what is now the American Southwest. Five hundred years later, a young amateur astronomer wonders about the secret of the town he grew up in: Entrada de la Luna, or Gateway to the Moon.

Morris’ previous work, The Jazz Palace, won the Anisfeld-Wolf Book Award for important contributions to the understanding of racism in 2016. She also writes short stories and travel memoirs. Her many novels and story collections have been translated into six languages. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

Doors open at 4:00 PM to meet and greet the author. A one-hour author reading and discussion will follow beginning at 4:30 PM. Light refreshments will be served. Admission is free.

Co-sponsored by the Beit Am Jewish Community and the MJCC. Grassroots Bookstore will be there with copies of the paperback edition of Gateway to the Moon for sale and author signing.

Mar
19
Tue
MJCC Author Series @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Mar 19 @ 6:30 pm
MJCC Author Series
Join us for this thought-provoking program that will bring an exceptional line up of authors and special events to our community.
Guest: $8. Member Cost: $5.
Series Pass: $20. Member: $12.
Tuesday, March 12 at 6:30 pm
Mary Morris – Gateway to the Moon

From award-winning novelist and memoirist Mary Morris comes the story of a sleepy New Mexican community that must come to grips with a religious and political inheritance they never expected. Morris is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels The Jazz Palace, A Mother’s Love, and House Arrest, and of nonfiction, including the travel memoir classic “Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone.” She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in literature and the 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction.

Tuesday, March 19 at 6:30 pm
Mark Sarvas
A son learns more about his father than he ever could have imagined when a mysterious piece of art is unexpectedly restored to him. Of all the questions asked by Sarvas’s Memento Park – about family and identity, about art and history–a central, unanswerable predicament lingers: How do we move forward when the past looms unreasonably large? Sarvas is the author of Memento Park and Harry, Revised, which was published in more than a dozen countries. His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, Bookforum and many others.
Tuesday, March 26 at 6:30 pm
Michael David Lukas
The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a moving page-turner of a novel from acclaimed storyteller Michael David Lukas. This tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces–potent magic, forbidden love–that boldly attempt to bridge that divide. Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, which was a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and has been published in fifteen languages. A graduate of Brown University, he has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Mar
26
Tue
MJCC Author Series @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Mar 26 @ 6:30 pm
MJCC Author Series
Join us for this thought-provoking program that will bring an exceptional line up of authors and special events to our community.
Guest: $8. Member Cost: $5.
Series Pass: $20. Member: $12.
Tuesday, March 12 at 6:30 pm
Mary Morris – Gateway to the Moon

From award-winning novelist and memoirist Mary Morris comes the story of a sleepy New Mexican community that must come to grips with a religious and political inheritance they never expected. Morris is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels The Jazz Palace, A Mother’s Love, and House Arrest, and of nonfiction, including the travel memoir classic “Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone.” She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in literature and the 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction.

Tuesday, March 19 at 6:30 pm
Mark Sarvas
A son learns more about his father than he ever could have imagined when a mysterious piece of art is unexpectedly restored to him. Of all the questions asked by Sarvas’s Memento Park – about family and identity, about art and history–a central, unanswerable predicament lingers: How do we move forward when the past looms unreasonably large? Sarvas is the author of Memento Park and Harry, Revised, which was published in more than a dozen countries. His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, Bookforum and many others.
Tuesday, March 26 at 6:30 pm
Michael David Lukas
The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a moving page-turner of a novel from acclaimed storyteller Michael David Lukas. This tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces–potent magic, forbidden love–that boldly attempt to bridge that divide. Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, which was a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and has been published in fifteen languages. A graduate of Brown University, he has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Apr
10
Wed
Chai Baby + PJ Library Indoor Playground @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
Apr 10 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

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.

May
8
Wed
Chai Baby + PJ Library Indoor Playground @ Mittleman Jewish Community Center
May 8 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

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.