If you check out the winning designs of this year’s SukkahPDX competition at the Oregon Jewish Museum on Northwest Kearney (see box), you might see another new sukkah two blocks away at Havurah Shalom. The Reconstructionist congregation Havurah Shalom has grown from a handful of families who first met informally at each other’s homes 36…
Joseph Berman and Michael Galen met in Beth Israel’s Sunday school about 20 years ago, were in the same bar mitzvah class and continued at Wednesday night school through high school. They played together in the jazz band at Sunset High School before heading off to their respective colleges. In 2012 the two reunited and…
Normally Dan Fields spends his days dreaming up ways to get visitors swept up in the world of Disney. But this month, he has turned his attention to engaging people in the wonderful world of Jewish Portland. Now the executive creative director at Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Entertainment, the Portland native is returning to his…
Tommy Cohen loves dogs and needed a bar mitzvah project. So it seemed natural to combine the two and raise a puppy to help the disabled. His bar mitzvah at Havurah Shalom was in February 2012. He got 8-week- old Jalina that May. Now, with Jalina fully trained and helping a young autistic boy, Tommy…
Dear Helen: Recently the sister-in-law of a good friend/neighbor woke up (in L.A.), did her morning rituals, went to work, and while seated at her desk in the shop she and her husband owned, was struck by a truck doing 90 miles an hour that plowed into their new building, seriously injuring her and three…
Who plants trees knowing they’ll never eat the fruit themselves? The Jewish people, that’s who. Jewish tradition exhorts us since our earliest days to recount the story of a man who plants selflessly for the generations to come. When we give through bequests and estate gifts to our Jewish community, we plant not just trees…
Portland poet Willa Schneberg’s latest volume, Rending the Garment, her fifth book, is a compendium of interconnected narratives that includes much poetry interspersed with prose, some of which speaks eloquently in the language of poetry. When taken as a whole, it maps the evolution – or “trajectory” – of one Jewish family in America, Schneberg’s…
Jewish theater professionals make up one-quarter of Artists Repertory Theatre’s expanded resident artist company, which now features 20 of “Portland’s most lauded professionals from a variety of theatrical disciplines.” “Theatre is an art form born of collaboration, and a theatrical experience is created by the innovative and inspired work of many disciplines,” said Artistic Director…
Steven Patton graduated from Drake University with a music business degree because, he says, it was safer than a performance degree. “You have the business minor to fall back on.” Be that as it may, there he was, 22 years old and in a band called “Andrew’s Ave.” (short for avenue) with three of his…
It’s hard to believe, but the High Holiday season is upon us once again. With the arrival of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at sunset on Wednesday, Sept. 24, the Earth completes one orbit around the sun and begins another. For more than 4 billion years the Earth has circled its parent star, and…
