LARA TRIBACK performs with a doumbek.

Serendipity, music link Triback to her roots

By Deborah Moon

Whether she’s belly dancing, drumming or teaching movement and music, Lara Triback is connecting herself and others with Judaism.
   
Of the year she spent immersed in Jewish study 10 hours a day at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, Triback said, “I wanted to make informed choices about my Jewish practice. I got the background and knowledge. For me, music sustains the connection.”
   
Triback now teaches music and movement to preschoolers through second-graders at Portland Jewish Academy. She taught a belly dance workshop—tying it to childbirth and the day’s focus on Rivka—at last spring’s Women’s Day of Jewish Learning. She helped develop the Notz’tzim (Hebrew music program for tots and parents) that meets at Neveh Shalom. She is offering two classes for adults at Havurah Shalom this fall. And she just finished her third year—the first time just days after arriving in Portland—giving a massage workshop at the Women’s ReJewvenation event held at B’nai B’rith Camp each fall.
   
But she said her journey to Portland and involvement in the Jewish community has been serendipitous.
   
Raised in a culturally Jewish home on Long Island, Triback said she didn’t give much thought to her Judaism. But when she decided she needed a break from Barnard College in New York City, she decided to explore her roots and work with her hands by spending a year on a kibbutz in Israel.
   
On the kibbutz, she met a man from Norway, who inspired her to study abroad in his country for a school year. After graduating from Barnard in 1992, she moved to Norway where she was promptly hired to teach in a Jewish kindergarten, for which she said her only qualification was she had two Jewish parents.
   
“I knew nothing about Jewish daily rituals, my Norwegian language skills were rudimentary, my Hebrew was shoddy, I knew little about the pedagogy,” she said. “I turned to music to teach the children. I relied on the beauty of Jewish music to draw me into the liturgy, which deepened my love of learning about my faith.”
   
After three years of teaching about Judaism, she decided it was time to learn more herself so she returned to Israel to study at Pardes. While in Israel, she visited Jordan where she saw belly dancing and “loved the connection between music and movement.”
   
When she returned to the United States in 1997, she began studying for a master’s in education with an emphasis on integrating arts into the curriculum at Lesley University in Boston. While looking for a belly dance teacher, she started Israeli folk dancing and became a dance leader for the Klezmer Conservatory Band and facilitated dancing at Jewish events in Boston.
   
In Boston, she began teaching Sunday school at Temple Israel, where she worked for Deborah Eisenbach-Budner, who is now Havurah Shalom’s education director.
   
Triback said that when she tired of the East Coast “rat race” and decided to move to Portland on a whim after meeting a Portland woman while both were studying Tango in Argentina, she said she had no idea her old boss was here.
   
Three days before moving to Portland, she said she found her job at PJA on Craig’s List. Soon after her arrival she saw Eisenbach-Budner on the PJA-Mittleman Jewish Community Center campus and the two reconnected.
   
“Lara combines Jewish education and programming with an MA in movement education in a most creative way,” said Eisenbach-Budner. “She teaches Middle Eastern drumming and dance (as in belly dancing) and has been a dance leader for Klezmer and Israeli dance. She is an all-around interesting person.”
   
Triback said meeting her former boss in a new city where she had just moved on a whim was yet another in a series of serendipitous events that connects her to the Jewish community.
   
“Deborah and Sharon Pollin (then PJA Judaic studies director) were my guardian angels,” Triback said. “I want to express my gratitude to Sharon Pollin, Deborah Eisenbach-Budner and the kindness and generosity of members of the Jewish community all over the world who have helped ease my transition to new places and situations.”
   
In addition to introducing Triback to the Women’s Day of Learning, Eisenbach-Budner persuaded her to put her talents to use at Havurah.
   
Last year Triback taught a movement class for children. This year she will teach two adult classes: “Get Your Groove On!” a Jewish drumming class meeting Monday evenings in October; and “Move with Kavannah,” a brief meditation followed by an aerobic workout to Middle Eastern and Klezmer movement and music at a time to be determined.
   
“I am excited that Havurah is offering these opportunities for a different kind of learning, an embodied approach to Jewish culture and spirituality,” said Eisenbach-Budner. “Lara Triback, who will be teaching both, is a fabulous teacher; she is systematic and creative in her approach. She has a love for Jewish and Middle Eastern music and movement that is contagious.”
   
For more information on Triback’s classes at Havurah, call Eisenbach-Budner at 503-248-4662. For more information on Triback’s other programs, contact her at rhythmandmuse@yahoo.com or visit her Web site www.laratriback.com.