“What’s up, Doc?” The man behind that question may be Oregon’s best-known Jewish export to Hollywood. Mel Blanc, “The Man of 1,000 Voices,” spoke for Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird and hundreds of other animated characters for Warner Brothers studios and other producers over a career spanning six decades….
In the first decades of the 20th century, two Jewish boys in South Portland took up the violin and became lifelong friends. Later, they would each make contributions to film music in addition to other achievements. Louis Kaufman, called “a violinist’s violinist and a musician’s musician” by the New York Times, was born in Portland…
Imagine we could take a look at Jewish cuisine in a modern-day location but from a 1930s Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade classic detective perspective. Maybe it would look something like this: The name’s Boyle – Hy Boyle, private ingestigator. My beat’s San Francisco.They call me lots of things – kosher cop, deli detective, food fuzz –…
David Shifrin could say he owes everything to his mishpocha (extended family). The world-renowned clarinetist is also a professor at the Yale School of Music and artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest, Portland’s summer chamber music festival. His official bio is studded with more notable accomplishments than we have room to print, but suffice it…
Twenty-five years ago, founding Portland Art Dealers Association members initiated First Thursday, a monthly art reception in which galleries open new exhibitions of works by painters, print makers, sculptors, photographers and glass artists, with extended gallery hours and that month’s artists in attendance. It has since become the Rose City’s most vibrant and active visual arts event, now…
I’ve just opened a boutique bed and breakfast on the golf course in Caesarea, Israel. Me and golf so don’t go! My idea of a great sport is racing across town to make it to Bloomingdales just as they open the doors. Then, power-walking through each department to get to the sale items before every…
When a band has been together for nearly a quarter of a century, a celebration is warranted. If it’s a Jewish band, you can assume that a certain amount of tsuris has accompanied the success. That’s the case with the Klezmatics, the world-renowned klezmer band founded in the mid-1980s in New York’s East Village. Beloved…
Sidonie Caron Sidonie Caron’s paintings adorn interiors from the Empire State Building to Oregon Health and Science University.When the new Kaiser Permanente Westwide Medical Center opens in Hillsboro in 2013, two of Caron’s paintings will grace the walls: the massive “Magic Mountain” and “Kibbutz Ga’ash.” “My older son, who has lived in Israel for many…
Aftermath, by Scott Nadelson, Hawthorne Books, $15.95 The characters in Aftermath are living in the wake of momentous events – the rupture of relationships, the loss of loved ones, the dissolution of dreams – and yet they find new ways of forging on with their lives, making accommodations that are sometimes delusional, sometimes destructive, sometimes…
Since appearing on the cover of the inaugural issue of Oregon Jewish Life, Aithan Shapira, Ph.D., and Debra Rosenthal have been busy preparing for their July wedding and Aithan has kept busy with exhibits in the United States and Europe. During May, Aithan exhibited “Migration with Pomegranate”, as one of 40 artists whose work was…
