Visit an Odessa café filled with intelligentsia or watch a shtetl family recite Sabbath prayers. At Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, interactive exhibits combine audio and video to recreate history. Conceived by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the designers of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Europe’s largest museum devoted to Jewish history and culture opened…
He was the prime mover in the creation of Jewish Renewal 40 years ago, and he is a world-renowned author and spiritual light, a leader in “blending mystic, Hassidic thought with modern progressive vision” that includes the divine feminine, the living planet and a faith that can touch all religions. This is Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi,…
Can beads, glitter and markers make a difference? Thirteen-year-old Jennifer Caplan believes that the art at B’nai B’rith’s Kehila program is one wonderful way children with special needs can express themselves. When Jennifer sat down with her parents to decide on a community service project for her bat mitzvah on Dec. 29 at Congregation Neveh…
CARL CAMP EXPANDS TO INCLUDE 7- AND 8-YEAR-OLDS The Carl Summer Camp is expanding the age range for their summer camp program. The camp has traditionally offered sessions for children ages 3 to 6. This summer new programs are being designed for 7- to 8-year-olds. Weekly camp sessions begin in June and run Monday- Friday…
For generations of Jewish youngsters, summer camp has opened new worlds, broadened vistas and created opportunities for lifelong friendships. That was the goal – when the B’nai B’rith Camp started in 1921 in Oregon, when Sephardic Adventure Camp and Camp Solomon Schechter began in Washington a generation later, or as re- cently as 2007, when…
Honoring their 108-year heritage as they step into the 21st century, members of Congregation Shaarie Torah looked to their founding families in deciding to affiliate with the Conservative movement in January 2013. The change will have little effect on the practices of the past 10 years but is expected to have great impact on the…
By the time an Israeli military pilot saluted Jeff Silver on the kibbutz where he spent his 17th summer in 1978, Jeff was already pre-disposed toward a career in aviation and the military. But Jeff couldn’t know that now, 34 years later, he would be poised to ascend to heights few others reach in that…
Every year when it’s time to shop for supplies for my Passover seder, I see the grocery store’s annual holiday display made up of boxes of matzah, potato starch, macaroons and potato kugel mix. Invariably included in the arrangement of foodstuffs is the jarred gefilte fish floating in murky liquid. Who actually eats this stuff…
To help launch a new community program that links volunteers with community needs, the Portland Mitzvah Network of the Jewish Federation of Portland is planning a broad range of volunteer projects to coincide with international Good Deeds Day March 10. In Portland volunteers will be able to choose from projects such as outdoor environmental work…
Portland’s cheese scene recently got a lot more sophisticated with the addition of three Murray’s Cheese mini-stores. These satellite shops, which are the first to open west of the Mississippi, are located inside selected Fred Meyer supermarkets. The first Murray’s Cheese shop in Oregon opened at the Burlingame Fred Meyer in May of 2012 and…
