Support the MJCC and PJA communities by donating books for our annual Used Book Sale.
Book Collection Drive: January 14 – March 15. Donate your used books to the MJCC. Drop off at the front desk. Need a pickup? Email pjabooksale@gmail.com to schedule pickup. No encyclopedias, please.
The Book Sale will be at the MJCC March 31 – April 2
Free and open to the community.
Monthly Mitzvah Project – February
Each month, the MJCC and PJA communities will collect items for the monthly mitzvah. These projects reflect the Jewish commitment to Tikkun Olam (repairing the world), providing opportunities to give back to our community.
Please drop off items in the blue bin in the MJCC Lobby.
February – Lunch + snack items for Portland Backpack
Chag Purim Sameach
Happy Purim!
The CST Sisterhood Needs Your Help This Year!
Our Sisterhood is about to embark on the annual hamentashen baking and sale. We have customers from all over Portland who buy these tasty treats and in turn Sisterhood funds many wonderful aspects of our community. Our hardworking bakers are about to start a multi-week process that will eventually make about 30,000 hamentashen! This is a wonderful, community-building endeavor.
Jobs include: rolling dough, shape balls of fruit, knipping the edges of the hamentashen (the best part!), egg washing, baking, packing and more. It’s great fun, and a great community builder. Everyone is invited to help, including children 12 and over.
Lunch is provided free for all volunteers each day of baking. We have aprons available in our kitchen; feel free to bring your own apron if you’d like. Questions? Email sisterhood@shaarietorah.org.
JAM Art Show + Sale
March is Jewish Arts Month but the show starts in late February! Enjoy a rotating exhibit in the MJCC lobby. Members of ORA: Northwest Jewish Artists will answer questions, accept commissions, and sell their art. A portion of the proceeds benefits the MJCC.
Pre-Order your hamantashen before March 8!
In the 1950s, Shaarie Torah Sisterhood began its most famous fundraiser, the baking of hamantaschen, and in its first year sold 100 dozen. In the warm, noisy kitchen, experienced cooks teach the novices how to roll dough, shape balls of fruit, knip, egg wash, bake, and pack. Last year the Sisterhood made over 2,500 dozen with the help of over 100 volunteers. They are shipped all over the world.
Brown Bag lunch with Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem speaking on In/Visible: Reinserting the Jewish Female Body in Contemporary Art Practice. Through the lens of erasure and invisibility, social practice artist and Torah scribe, Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem, will speak about her own body of work and the critical role it plays in the reinsertion of the female body in traditional Jewish practice and culture. Informed by feminist theorists, Gloria Anzaldúa and Bonna Devora Haberman, Shoshana will draw from her own life experiences and her 25-year career as an artist.
In addition to her socially engaged art practice, Shoshana is an essayist, curator and educator. She is occupied with curiosities about religion and ritual, feminism and patriarchy and systems thinking. She often reimagines traditional or patriarchal practices, primarily but not solely, Jewish ones, reinserting them, with new forms, into their familiar contexts. Some subjects of her work include erasure, branding, citizenship, silence, loss, ritual object, death and dying.
Shoshana was one of the first women in modern times to train and practice as a Torah scribe. Her scribal work inspired her international collaboration, Women of the Book, launched with the Jerusalem Biennale 2015, and is informing her current work on sustainable parchment manufacturing. After 20 years in Israel, Shoshana currently resides with her family in Portland where she is an MFA candidate in Contemporary Art Practice at Portland State University.
Israeli Dancing
Join us for a fun, introductory Israeli folk dance class. All levels are welcome. Six people needed to run class.
Wednesday Evenings,
Dec. 26 – Feb. 27
Cost: $100 Members + Guests.
Drop-in Fee: $15 per class.
Registration information: CG105, 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.
Come study and discuss the Bible with Rabbi Isaak at Neveh Shalom.
INTRODUCTION TO JUDAISM CLASS
Winter/Spring 2019 Session begins January 17. This 18-week course is taught by members of The Oregon Board of Rabbis, representing a variety of Jewish affiliation. A carefully constructed curriculum includes Jewish history, life cycle events, holidays, ritual and daily practice, theology, study of Torah and contemporary Jewish America. While not a conversion class, most OBR members consider it a prerequisite for students beginning study for conversion. Classes 7-9 pm, Thursdays, at rotating Portland area synagogues, course fee $360 includes class materials. Register online or contact JoAnn Bezodis, Class Facilitator, at 971-248-5465, or by email at info@oregonboardofrabbis.org. Website: http://oregonboardofrabbis.org/introduction-to-judaism-class/
Education Administrator