Issue Number 15 Volume 49

JERUSALEM (JTA)—With a government commission of inquiry into the war in Lebanon about to issue its findings and challenges to his leadership mounting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting for his political life.

Soon, it will be three years since the U.S. government deemed Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield a material witness connected to the terrorist bombings that killed 191 in Madrid, Spain.

JAFFA, Israel (JTA)—By the hundreds, Reform rabbis and activists from around the globe filed into the sprawling glass and stone complex that is the new cornerstone of the movement's success in Israel.

The Western Jewish Studies Association held its 13th annual conference—its "bar mitzvah," in the words of the scholarly organization's president, Professor Lawrence Baron of San Diego State University—at Portland State University on March 18 and 19. Local professors, as well as scholars from across the United States, Europe and Israel, participated in the conference's more than two dozen panels.

"You are just who this community needs," said Rabbi David Fine, speaking to a colleague in West Linn last month.

Each of Oregon's three Reform congregations and the Reform congregation in Vancouver, Wash., sent delegations to the biennial conference of the Pacific Northwest Council of the Union for Reform Judaism hosted March 16-18 by Temple Sholom in Vancouver, B.C.

On Feb. 19, the day his wife would have celebrated her 68th birthday, Nathan Cogan spoke passionately about the late Sara Glasgow Cogan and the new Portland State University scholarship that he helped create to honor her memory.

Jody Klevit wants everyone to save the date May 6 for the Oregon Jewish Museum's annual fine-art auction, silent auction and banquet set this year for the elegant and historic Governor Hotel downtown.

At a time when most Americans had yet to grasp the significance of the rise of fascism in Germany, elsewhere in Europe and in the Far East, a first-time novelist in Portland wrote and published a brief and disturbing story that quickly gained wide public attention and has since become a classic of literary and political prescience.

There is one loose end left hanging in Wendy Wasserstein's play "The Sisters Rosensweig," on stage now through April 22 at Portland's Profile Theatre.

I know it's almost Passover, but flash back if you would to the Purim story and imagine the following scene: A delegation of church leaders has just met with Haman and is now holding a press conference (indulge me here).

JERUSALEM (JTA)—In a kitchen stocked with round glass jars of pickled lemons, baby eggplant, and baskets of garlic and red peppers, Rimon Ajami is beginning to prepare a Passover seder for 40 people.