Calendar

A Conversation with Professor Steven Wasserstrom, Moe & Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and Humanities, Reed College about Holocaust denial and the limits of free speech.

The OJMCHE series of informal lunchtime conversations with scholars, museum professionals, historians, and others. Bring a lunch or buy a brown bag 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.

Join photographer Elliot Burg as we discusses his photographs on view in the East Gallery (starting Oct 4). In early 2017, photographer Elliot Burg decided to seek out and capture images of the place in Eastern Europe where his Jewish grandfather and namesake Eli (pronounced “Ellie”) had come from. The exhibition is the story of that journey.

OJMCHE kicks off a series of informal lunchtime conversations with scholars, museum professionals, historians, and others. Bring a lunch or buy a brown bag 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.

This month featuring Speaker’s Bureau member Rosalyn Kliot, who will share her story, from origins in Vilna and Lodz, to life in Oregon today. This event is part of the 2018 Portland Jewish Book Month series on David Fishman’s The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis.

The OJMCHE series of informal lunchtime conversations. Bring a lunch or buy a brown bag 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.

The OJMCHE series of informal lunchtime conversations. Bring a lunch or buy a brown bag 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.

Join Kenneth Helphand, Philip H. Knight Professor of Landscape Architecture Emeritus University of Oregon, for a talk on Ghetto Gardens in conjunction with our current exhibition. The Last Journey of the Jews of Lodz offers an extraordinary rare glimpse of life inside the Lodz Ghetto through the lens of Polish Jewish photojournalist Henryk Ross.

It seems improbable, but gardens were made in the ghettos of Lodz, Warsaw, Kovno and more. Based on research in Poland, Israel and the US this illustrated talk speaks about the creation and meaning of these gardens based on the first person accounts of their creators and witnesses. The talk is based on material in Helphand’s award winning book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime. The OJMCHE Brown Bag lunch is a series of informal lunchtime conversations. Bring a lunch or buy a brown bag 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.

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.