Oregon has cultivated a national reputation for culinary excellence. Portland in particular has become the darling of the foodies. As Eric Asimov wrote in The New York Times, “Portland has emerged from its chrysalis as a full-fledged dining destination.” With the advent of the city’s burgeoning foodcart culture, Portland has taken its love affair with food to the next level. U.S. News…
Two important stories recently emerged simultaneously. There was no connection between them other than timing. This illustrates the unique, even bizarre and somewhat disconcerting reality we live with here: fighting for survival against our external enemies while fighting internal battles against ourselves. The top news item was the controversial budget passed by the government and Knesset and the resulting populist…
Two years ago Rabbi Michael and Mira Kaplan were looking for a place where they could make a difference. They found it in Portland. Rabbi Kaplan, then a rabbinic associate at the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx, NY, accepted an invitation from Congregation Ahavath Achim to become its spiritual leader. “There is a tremendous potential for growth here,” he…
For more than 100 years, Sephardic Jews have been an important part of the Portland Jewish community. Next year, beginning in June, they will celebrate their rich history and hopes for the future with “A Hundred Years of Sephardic Life in Portland.” This ambitious project will feature a gala kickoff dinner and a four-month historical exhibit, documentary DVD and catalog. “We’ve…
Once the infamous Berlin Wall came down in 1989, spectacular shopping complexes, elegant new hotels and office towers made over the face of what had been Communist-controlled East Berlin. At the same time, the horrendous fate of Berlin’s once thriving Jewish community of some 160,000, the largest in Europe, was observed with somber, often heart-wrenching memorials. Included are the moving Holocaust…
My father was known as Louis Glick in English and Laibl Glick in Yiddish. He was born around 1900 in Meziboz in the Russian Ukraine. When “Fiddler on the Roof ” came out, he remarked that his shtetl, where the Baal Shem Tov developed Hassidism, could well have been the model for the movie. During the first years of the Russian Revolution,…
Sitting in a coffee shop, I ate breakfast with Vera Katz. The only clue I had that she is a self-proclaimed control freak was by how hard it was to get her to agree to meet. It took months. It was on her terms. What I found was an Oregon treasure. Vera is grateful, articulate and exceedingly charming –…
When Sharon Tarlow kicked off Congregation Beth Israel’s needlepoint pillow reunion on April 11, the women involved in the 1974 project gathered around her and smiled. Their handiwork of two dozen chair backs has graced seats along the perimeter and bima of the Byzantine sanctuary for decades. Envisioned by the sisterhood, designed by artist Janet Louvau Holt (then Jansen), and approved…
Renate Dollinger was a landscape painter with a small gallery in Palo Alto, CA, a husband, four children and lots of dogs when, in 1968, at the age of 44, she suddenly turned to painting life in a shtetl. “Cute,” her husband said when he saw the first painting. “Where did that come from?” “I don’t know,” she replied. Here’s what…
Ellen Eisenberg, whose interests span everything from Jewish gauchos to Japanese internment, is excited about her newest project: writing about Oregon’s Jewish community from the 1950s on. Eisenberg, the Dwight and Margaret Lear professor of American history at Willamette University, has just been selected to write what could be called “the sequel” or a companion…
