Local community rich with learning options
By Deborah Moon Seldner
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The region's Jewish community offers extensive opportunities for adults seeking to expand their Jewish knowledge and experiences. On the following pages are class listings —all geared toward adult learning—from synagogues, colleges and other groups in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
In addition to course listings, this edition features four local organizations focusing in large part on pluralistic adult Jewish education.
Portland's Florence Melton Adult Mini-School offers an intensive two-year text-based course for achieving Jewish literacy. Now in its seventh year in Portland, the mini-school also offers a variety of shorter graduate courses on specific topics.
Portland Kollel opened earlier this year with the motto, "Torah for all." Four Orthodox rabbis and their wives offer a variety of opportunities for all Jews to learn about and experience Judaism outside of the synagogue. Two of the rabbis—Chanan Spivak and Tzvi Fischer—focus all their efforts on the Portland Kollel, while two others offer Kollel programs part-time.
In November 2005, Portland became one of 160 cities worldwide offering Jewish Learning Institute courses. The JLI is a program of the Chabad Lubavitch movement for adult students pursuing intellectual and spiritual growth.
Rosen said she feels it's important for adults from diverse backgrounds to study Jewish texts together.
"It is important for us to study together as a community—we learn not just from our texts, but from each other," she said. "Each of us brings insights to make the texts come alive—not very different from what our great commentators did as they discussed the Mishna."
Rosen said she believes the resurgence of adult Jewish education began in the mid-1990s when American Jews felt they no longer needed to focus all their attention on fighting anti-Semitism, securing Israel's safety and integrating into American society.
"With all those goals apparently achieved, they now turned to studying because their children had a religious education that was surpassing that of their parents," said Rosen.
Now with anti-Semitism growing and instability in the Middle East, Rosen said that American Jews are pursuing Jewish education to respond to the very contemporary issues that had distracted them from Jewish studies in the middle decades of the 1900s. She said they now seek answers "in our holy texts."