COMMUNITY CONCIERGE Linda Nemer Singer creates a display of Portland area congregations so newcomers and unaffiliated members of the local Jewish community can find a place to celebrate Shabbat. The information is displayed every Friday in the Mittleman Jewish Community Center. Known as the community’s “living room,” Singer said the MJCC is the logical place to help people explore the rest of the community’s home, which she said is made up of all Portland-area Jewish agencies and congregations.
Singer helps Jewish community feel like home
By Deborah Moon
article created on:
Dreams can come true—just ask Linda Nemer Singer whose new job as community concierge not only fulfills her dream, it also gives her the chance to make dreams come true for newcomers and community organizations.
Singer said she used to joke that her dream job would be to walk around the lobby of the Mittleman Jewish Community Center with a sandwich board directing people to activities and volunteer opportunities anywhere in the Jewish community.
While she doesn’t have the sandwich board, she does get to spend her days connecting people with activities, organizations, synagogues and even housing.
“I don’t make hotel reservations, but I do suggest hotels, apartments, neighborhoods …,” she quipped.
“This job is a combination of outreach to the synagogues and organizations and promoting the synagogues and agencies to people in the community,” she said.
Asked why the MJCC hired a community concierge, Singer explained, “We are the living room of the Jewish community, but they (synagogues and agencies) make up the rest of the home.”
Singer views her job as ensuring that the community is a home that is accessible to all.
“We have such a rich community of classes and synagogues and places where people can get involved,” said Singer, who as a Portland native long involved in the Jewish community as both a volunteer and communal professional has an intimate knowledge of that richness.
Formerly Singer served as admissions director for Portland Jewish Academy, where in addition to her admissions duties she informally helped families new to town to acclimate to the local Jewish community.
Now she answers similar questions on a more formal basis.
“I get phone calls and e-mails from people coming to Portland to visit who want to be within walking distance of a synagogue for Shabbat, or who are looking at an apartment and want to know if it’s in a good neighborhood, or wanting to know about klezmer violin lessons,” she said. “If I don’t know the answer, I go and find out.”
Singer said she also enjoys showing off the MJCC and talking to people about what activities and classes they’d like to see at the center.
“I love being able to show off the center to a person who has lived here all their life but haven’t been here in five years or to a person who just got off a plane five days ago and is looking to get connected,” she said. “They are all so impressed with the beautiful facility.”
Singer has a soft spot for the JCC. She met her husband Gary at the old JCC at a Tuesday night meeting of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (which still meets Tuesday nights at the MJCC during the school year).
And when Singer was a child, her family went to the JCC every Sunday after religious school for hot dogs and time to play in the gym or do art projects.
“It was always just alive with families,” she said. “That’s what we hope to see again. We are over 1,000 members now, and it’s exciting to see it growing and growing.”
As part of the effort to recapture that feel, the center hosts Sunday pool parties during the summer. The pool parties continue each Sunday through Aug. 24 from 11:30-3 p.m. For pool party information, call 503-244-0111.
Anyone in need of information about anything connected to the Jewish community is invited to contact Singer at 503-535-3539 or lsinger@oregonjcc.org.
