Volume 50, Issue 3

Rabbi Arthur Zuckerman shows members of Congregation Shaarie Torah how to feed a calf and then takes them on a hay ride at Plumper Pumpkins farm. Religious School students and some parents took a field trip to the farm to celebrate Sukkot, a harvest holiday.

When Matan Horenstein steps onto the bimah at Congregation Shaarie Torah Oct. 13 to become a bar mitzvah, it won’t be the first time he has led services.

Tickets to see Shoshana Bean perform at the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland’s Opening Night are going fast.

Those who know the secrets of Sephardic cooking have dwindled in numbers in Portland, and likely elsewhere.

As part of its effort to expand knowledge of Sephardic traditions, Congregation Ahavath Achim will hold a series of classes focusing in Jewish prayers—Sephardi style.

The Oregon Jewish Community Foundation hired Julie Diamond to fill the new position of director of development.

Joe Maser hands corn stalks to Earle Ellis to put on top of the sukkah volunteers and staff constructed in the courtyard of the Mittleman Jewish Community Center, which has been referred to as the “community’s living room.”

The women who gathered at the Multnomah Village storefront office last year were as diverse as Hadassah itself.

Congregation Neveh Shalom was one of 1,190 teams that brought more than 47,000 breast cancer survivors and activists to walk or run in the 16th Annual Portland Komen Race for the Cure on Sept. 23, raising an estimated $3 million to support breast cancer research.

Beginning in early October, Congregation Beth Israel will be offering an adult learning course entitled “Living and Dying: Bioethics from a Jewish Perspective,” taught by CBI Senior Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana.

Rabbi Motti Wilhelm, the eldest offspring of Chabad of Oregon founders Rabbi Moshe and Devora Wilhelm, has returned to Portland with his wife and daughter to head the Jewish Learning Institute in Portland.

“The Land and the Spirit,” a new six-week class from the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, will explore the ties that bind Jews to Israel at three locations in the Portland area beginning Oct. 30.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland is working to be more responsive to community needs with a new telephone system and a new staff person at the front desk.

Interfaith dialogue takes center stage Oct. 20 as the Mittleman Jewish Community Center  hosts an evening program featuring a documentary on unity followed by a panel discussion.

Shalom Shpitsik and Shira Tanzer, both 5, check out the new children’s synagogue furniture that Chabad of Oregon ordered for children’s services.

“Jewish Saints of Morocco sometimes trace back not only to Kohanim,” said Dr. Oren Kosansky, an anthropologist at Lewis and Clark College.

NEW YORK (JTA)—The political theater surrounding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York last month triggered plenty of protests, headlines and debates.

LONDON (JTA)—The decision by Britain’s largest academic union to drop its proposed boycott of Israel may not spell the end of the union’s campaign to ostracize the Jewish state.

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Jewish institutions will receive the majority of U.S. federal funds designated this year to help secure non-profit organizations.

Lieberman’s children Israel bound?

JERUSALEM (JTA)—The wife of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said at least one of their children plans to immigrate to Israel.

Assad plays down Israeli sortie

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s mysterious air raid on Syria last month targeted a disused military building, Bashar Assad said.

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The difficulties faced by the U.S. government body researching Nazi war crimes underscore the need to make government records more accessible, the body said in its conclusion.

Preface

The manuscript excerpt below is the first of four excerpts from the memoir of Dr. Moisey Wolf to be published in the Jewish Review
 

Portland Open Studios publicity maven Bonnie Meltzer uses computers and individual attention to ensure all 98 artists in this month’s two-weekend studio tours reap the benefits of community, collaboration and commissions that come with participation.

Miriam Feder has performed in front of audiences since she was a child in Evanston, Ill., where she started out in children’s theater and kept at it through high school and at the University of Minnesota where she earned a B.A. in Theater Arts.

This latest work by the prolific Diane Ackerman is a nonfiction account of an extraordinary couple that reads like the most transporting fiction. Ackerman, a poet and nature writer, found a subject that brings out all her strengths. No writer fascinated by human nature and heroism could ask for better material, as Ackerman reveals in her first two sentences:

Portland author Floyd Skloot is a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.

PARIS (JTA)—In 1944, the French Jewish Resistance decided to evacuate the Jewish children hidden in an orphanage west of Paris and transport them by train to Switzerland.

Congregation Ahavath Achim will host a Sephardic Winter Film Series the third Thursday of each month beginning Oct. 18.

ORA, the association of Jewish women artists in Portland, will present an exhibition Oct. 28 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland.

XM and Sirius satellite radio broadcast Rabbi Bob Alper’s comedy bits several times daily, often sandwiched between Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby.

If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? (Hillel, Pirkei Avot 1:14) This essay was inspired by those who feel we should not raise our voices and correct propaganda for fear it will bring attention to us.

Children's TV show riles grown-up viewer

FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J. (JTA)—The siddur is not a study text for rabbis and cantors; it is a love letter between Jews and our God. The experience of worship is not intellectual.

NEW YORK (JTA)—The forthcoming publication of Mishkan T’filah, the first new Reform prayer book in 30 years, reminded me of these words by Abraham Joshua Heschel in “Man’s Quest for God:” “The crisis of prayer is not a problem of the text. It is a problem of the soul,” Heschel wrote. “The siddur must not be used as a scapegoat. A revision of the prayer book will not solve the crisis of prayer.”A new siddur in this 21st century raises anew some critical questions about the entire enterprise of changing traditional liturgy.

Irving plans British speaking tour

PRAGUE (JTA)—Convicted Holocaust denier and British author David Irving is attempting to revive his career as a historian.

PROUSER/MARENSTEIN

PRAGUE (JTA)—An unusual twist in one of the largest restitution claims for Nazi-era art may complicate the recovery efforts by the heirs of a Dutch Jewish art dealer.

ST. LOUIS (JTA)—Our engagement with the 100,000 American Taglit-birthright Israel trip alumni will determine the shape of the Jewish community for years. While a growing body of research indicates that the trips provide a foundational Jewish experience, it is not clear that the Jewish community is effectively tapping into this potential for increased involvement.

RISHON LE ZION, Israel (JTA)—In a dusty courtyard filled with yellowing grass and weeds, the day’s mourners gather, still shocked by the death of Sukula Sukul, killed when her husband took a kitchen knife and stabbed her as their children slept.

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Uninformed readers of the general American press these days learn only two things about Israel. One is that it is consumed with war and peace. The other is that this small state of 7 million people deploys—or does not, depending on who you are reading—the most powerful, homogenous lobby in Washington, bending the American government’s actions to its interests at will.

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Rabbi Kerry Olitzky has been urging the Jewish community to be more welcoming to intermarried and unaffiliated families for the past 20 years.

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