October 2015

Volume 37 Issue 12

Tashlich

Inside this Issue From the Rabbi…………………………..….Page 1 Steering Committee..………..…..………...Page 2 Ilene’s Music Corner…………....………….Page 3 Rabbi Search Update……………………….Page 3 Fired Up! News & Events .…….…………..Page 6 Tributes ……………………………………..Page 8 Bulletin Board……………………………….Page 9 Calendar……………………………..….......Page 10 Tikkun Olam…………………………………Page 11

HAKOL October 2015

HAKOL

The Voice of Havurah Shalom

Portland’s Jewish Reconstructionist Community

825 NW 18th Ave

Portland, OR 97209-2333

(503) 248-4662

www.havurahshalom.org

Membership Picnic

Membership Picnic

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Much has been written over the years about Jewish continuity. Rabbis

have railed from the pulpit about parents failing to give their children

a good Jewish education, generations of Hebrew school educators

revised their curricula to meet the challenges of assimilation, camp

directors championed the informal atmospherics of a summer experi-

ence. In the last couple of decades there has arisen a philanthropic

smorgasbord of Star Trek-inspired beam-me-up voyages to Israel. In

each case, the cultural mavens offered a prescription. Take this drug

and your offspring will save the Jewish planet. (You didn’t know there

was one?) Swallow this prophylactic pill and it’s like hydroponic to-

matoes – a slow drip of Rashi and ibn

Ezra in a desert of illiteracy. We have

been urged to make Jewish life flow-

er.

As I have written, when I ar-

rived in Havurah in 1987, we were

raising the roof. There was a commit-

ment to raucous Torah discussions,

and a lively lay leadership that insist-

ed that no surrogate clergy leaders

would deprive them of their thinking

power. There was the collaborative

spirit of put-it-up and then take-it-

down. This meant perpetually mov-

ing chairs around and bringing up car-

peting from basements. We had to

figure out whose basements first –

institutional memory didn’t yet exist!

The High Holidays were a feast that

still goes on today, open to all and

capitalizing on multiple spiritual voices.

The vitality of the organization (I used to refer to it as an

“organism”) was like none other, but I worried openly about one gap-

ing hole in our planning. When kids reached the ripe old age of 14 or

15, after having traversed a Shabbat School passage together with

parents working out the quandaries of Jewish (Continued on page 4)

Jeff Gottfried with his daughter Miriam, who now reports for The Wall Street Journal and she reads the haftarah for her synagogue in Brooklyn on High Holidays

Rabbi’s Column: Evolving Jewish Identity — Adolescence and the Havurah High School Experience

2

Havurah Office will be

Monday Oct 4th for Shemini Atzeret Tuesday Oct 5th for Simchat Torah

Steering Committee

Havurah Shalom Steering Committee August 18 , 2015

Present: Karen Ballard, Shelley Sobel, Debbi Nadell, Miryam Brewer, Teri Ruch, Rachel Palmer, Laura Ehrlich, John Neiheisel, Larry Reichman, Andy Gordon, Barbara Simon, Rabbi Joey Wolf, Liz Joffe, Janet Byrd, Iris Ellen-berg

Agenda Items For the complete minutes of the meeting, please contact the Havurah office. The following topics were discussed:

Dare I call You Cousin—Photography Exhibit Havurah Financials Updated Havurah Logo Cemetery Committee Update Membership Committee Update High Holidays Update Gender Neutral Restrooms Rabbi Search Committee Update Fired-up Update

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 pm.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Simon Substitute Executive Secretary & Steering Committee member

HAKOL October 2015

President’s Corner

As we write this article, we have just turned the page to 5776. We trust that the time you spent with your Havurah family at the Tiffany Center was fulfilling, and you had the chance to reflect on the past year and look ahead to the year that is just be-ginning. Reflecting on the past and looking ahead is something that leaders at Havurah are consumed with right now. In the rear view mirror, we see a dynamic community of more than 36 years, based on being open and inclusive, on members creating and sustain-ing traditions, and a staff that has nurtured us along the way. We also see an amazing trajectory of member-ship growth, which is continuing today. When we both joined Havurah close to two decades ago, we had about 150 fewer member families than we do to-day. Our founding families and early members felt then – and still do today – that our core values include everyone taking an active role in the community, shar-ing our talents and our time to create enriching pro-grams and services that express the unique flavor of Havurah. We are fortunate at Havurah to have so many who want to join us on their spiritual journey. Our larger size has prompted us to take out the crystal ball and consider many questions about how we move into the future -- What is the right leadership model for our com-

munity? How do we plan for holiday celebrations and oth-

er events with the ‘right’ amount of staff support, but maintain our emphasis on members generat-ing programming?

What opportunities would further enhance the community?

How do we plan our future finances to meet the challenges of our size and increasing needs?

We hope to have the chance to discuss these and other questions with many of you. We look forward to hearing your thoughts in the year ahead. L’Shanah Tovah! Debbi Nadell and Shelley Sobel, Havurah Co-presidents

Quote Corner

"If you are not a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for a tomorrow? "

- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

One Word To pray

is to know how to stand still and to dwell upon a word. --Abraham Joshua Heschel

3

Rabbi Search Update

HAKOL October 2015

I’m writing this right before Rosh Hashana, reflecting on this past week…..and the coming year. Earlier in the week, Havurah Shalom was honored by having not one, but two of our musicians recognized as two of 21 “new voices” in Jewish music. (http://forward.com/series/soundtrack/2015/) Both Beth Hamon and I were included among this esteemed list of 21. Please take the time to visit the website and listen to the songs and read some of the words of the singers included there. It’s a diverse and rich collection of mel-odies and voices, but the passion and love is heard in each piece. Havurah Shalom?? Portland, Oregon? A relatively small community. And probably, the only synagogue in the US with two of the 21 musicians showcased. How in the world did

this happen? I have always thought that one of the greatest gifts one can receive from this community is the

freedom we have to explore and put into prac-tise that which we wish to pursue. If you want

to sing in services, you can! If you want to try to learn to lead, you can! If

Ilene’s Music Corner you want to implement a pro-gram….teach a class….suggest a program….create something new….you CAN! And, as I can personally attest, when you start out on a path, you don’t really know where it’s going to end. But I can tell you that, for both Beth and me, this path, born a bit from love and a bit from necessity, has brought forth great de-light, joy and surprise! Havurah has given us opportuni-ties over the years to explore and experience that which we most likely would not have had else-where. And from those experiences, came growth and learning. And the opportunity to dig deep and to cre-ate music to share. Thank you, Havurah, for giving me, for giving us, these opportunities to learn and grow. It is because of what we all do and give that these songs, and so many more, have been born and have taken flight. It’s a new year. What are you going to do dif-ferently? What do you want to try? What have you been dreaming about? This is the time to take your first steps towards something that can lead you on an adventure of a lifetime. Grab this chance. And wher-ever it leads, we will all enjoy and kvell with you! -Ilene Safyan

From January through March 2015, over 175 people came to Havurah’s Rabbi Search Focus Groups and over 175 people responded to the Rabbi Search Survey. The Rabbi Search Committee has spent the summer going through the notes, analyzing the data, writing a report, and starting to develop the job description. The report will be pre-sented to the Steering Committee and entire congregation in October. We hope to have the job description ready in January 2016. In the survey we asked the following question: “What are three words that describe what you are looing for in a new rabbi?” To the right is a word cloud showing what people said.

The larger the word the more often it was said. We hope you enjoy exploring it - Miryam Brewer

4 HAKOL October 2015

identity, everything was left up in the air. True, there was a

makeshift youth group. However, these wonderful young peo-

ple, upon entering high school, were really very much on their

own. There was no articulate set of objectives – no program be-

sides getting together every so often. I can still remember them

at 15 – they are now 40 years old.

A number of years ago, in a private moment, one of Ha-

vurah’s founding members confided that he feared that the for-

mation of Havurah Shalom was an experiment that had failed.

He pondered the lack of involvement of his offspring. Even with

all the tumult and creativity, who were we kidding, he chortled,

self-disgustedly.

So I am thinking about what I have

learned about those young people just starting

out on their own path. My own mid-twentieth

century experience dictated that adolescent

Jews who passaged out of Hebrew School and

bar and bat (there weren’t many of these back

then) years rocketed as far away as possible. It

seemed that just about everything they lashed

out against was a reaction to bad experiences

growing up Jewish. In my own cohort, when I

am on the east coast and I sit down with old

friends from the neighborhood, they welcome

the opportunity to lambast what they perceived

as a cruel joke – growing up in a Jewish educa-

tional context that limped along, at best. At

worst, it was comical and even painfully unsuit-

ed to the dilemmas of American Jewry arriving in the middle

class. It’s the Coen Brothers and “A Serious Man”. However,

when I’ve had the occasion to sit down with these now grownup

Havurah kids, they have actually welcomed the opportunity to

build on top of a bottom floor. If my own generation proclaimed,

“Don’t tell me why to be Jewish – I’m sick of it!”, these people

who were once teenagers in Havurah ask “Please tell me why.”

They welcome the conversation.

I think they saw this adult community back in the day in

a largely positive light, even if they have now chosen divergent

paths. They recall parents invested in figuring out what Jewish

wisdom and ethics demanded from them – how to respond to a

nuclear arms race, what kind of music to produce, whether or

not to take in a Cambodian refugee family, how to encourage a

conversation about the meaning of a difficult passage of Torah.

This was far more than our own parents modeled for us – and, of

course, it didn’t hurt that Havurah parents had to teach their

own kids in Shabbat School, when they were young.

That being said, we have learned a lot over several

decades about inculcating Jewish excitement and the value of

ongoing Jewish learning. It’s seems like yesterday, that I recall

sitting in the Boston office of a leading Jewish educator and

telling him that if I ever reached the pinnacle of Jewish com-

munal authority (little did I know), then I would abolish He-

brew school. I was maybe 14 years old. I had done my time

and was ready to walk away a free person. . . Or so I let it be

known, even if I may have cared a good deal more about the

soul of the project, a legacy of Torah that was in danger of es-

caping me.

As I reoriented my own study path, in college and

eventually at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I be-

friended some of that era’s most imaginative peda-

gogues. Together, we turned over the soil and forced

ourselves to think through the assignment: what were

these texts, laconic and black-and-white on the page,

requiring of us? Weren’t we ourselves texts on a

page? Who would respond to our lettering, our mini-

malist lyrics? What behaviors invited human beings-as

-midrash-in-the-making to produce a coherent com-

mentary? Was there music in the teaching? Was it

balletic?

In each case, the inquiries of my generation

beckoned to today’s. We were learning to be models,

whereas our parents had been cut off from the whole

process (thanks to immigration’s cruelties, a consum-

er culture’s rising assault on personhood) of trans-

mitting spiritual integrity.

I used to think that the only solution to the problem of

providing a holistic and informed Jewish identity was day

school. But this approach, while it offered certain advantages,

deferred yet another set of difficulties. The obvious difficulties

had to do with roping off a cohort of Jewish kids, depriving

them of exposure to children of other ethnicities and social

and economic groupings. If you had any commitment at all to

American pluralism, sending kids to a day school meant under-

mining that commitment in a significant way. The not so obvi-

ous difficulties had to do with a feature of the Jewish identity

issue that gets lost on most people. While it may be com-

forting to see Jewish kinder romping in a Jewish environment,

complete with language skills and singing and dancing and a

natural proficiency with texts (nested within American history

and mathematics), the real work of Jewish learning begins at

adolescence. It is then, when youths are asked to sculpt an

identity – hormonal, sexual, political, spiritual.

Back to Havurah in 1987. The question arose for me

Articles Continued Rabbi Article (Continued from page 1)

Ben Brewer, son of Miryam and Roger Brewer, served in the Israeli Army.

5 HAKOL October 2015

Articles Continued

early on, what are we doing for our young people post-bar/t

mitzvah? The answer, I knew, was TBD. So when just a few

years later the Oregon Board of Rabbis brokered a smart deal

with our illustrious Jewish Federation to

subsidize trips to Israel for kids who com-

mitted to four year synagogue high school

programs, I realized that we needed to use

this opportunity to establish a program of

our own.

Ironically, although a number of our

kids did, in fact, go on these subsidized pro-

grams for two or three months during their

high school years, the Israel scholarship

served as an inducement to our Havurah

kids to take learning past bar mitzvah. In

the other synagogues, kids joined a high

school program to go to Israel. In our case,

it worked in the reverse. Over the years, we have been blessed

with some amazing teachers – Emily Simon, Ben Anderson-

Nathe, Leeza Negelev and Nili Yosha are the crème de la crème.

Each one has brought a uniquely inspiring understanding of the

issues and devotion to the craft of working with young, evolving

personalities. Together, working with Deborah Eisenbach-

Budner, they have lifted up an extraordinary forum for creative

thinking and the interaction of Jewish ideas and contemporary

culture. They themselves are beloved by our young adults.

Before they arrived on the scene, I took on the task of

being Havurah High’s original teacher. At the time, this piece of

the work I did for Havurah drew me away

from other rabbinic tasks, but I knew how

important this focus was. I based my work

on the premise that it’s fine and good to

assemble young Jews in a youth group, but

it’s utterly uninspiring and unoriginal be-

yond the fact that Jewish adults are some-

how cheered to see Jewish kids in one

place. As far as the content was con-

cerned, they might as well have been a

Mormon group or a 4-H gathering or even a

Chess Club, if they weren’t going to be

committed to Jewish learning in an imagi-

native way. So I established a rotational

approach – one in which each of every four years (of high

school) I would teach a different period: biblical, rabbinic, Mid-

dle Ages, and contemporary Judaism and then begin again. For

a period during the class, I would lecture them and introduce

them to the radical texts and ideas of that period, and then I’d

turn it over to some kind of interactive, smaller group experi-

ence. I was serious about the teaching component, but I knew

that it was a springboard for deeper con-

versation – and that was what I was after

with our adolescents.

I will close this column by com-

menting on what came out of the experi-

ence. I discovered that the anywhere

from 25-50 kids that participated week-to-

week (and they came from other congre-

gations too) wanted to be there. They

chafed, when their parents insisted that

they had too much assigned to them by

their regular high schools or for other rea-

sons had to miss a session. Their parents

reported to me repeatedly that the kids

clawed their way to be together with their Havurah cohort, at

15, 16, 17 and even 18 years old, because they treasured the

special bond between them. The subject matter was the sine

qua non, but the love and sweetness that flowed between them

may have been the greatest surprise, a gift of a lifetime. And it

came at a stage of life that can be hard on just about everyone.

Not each of them has gone on to build a Jewish identity

as an adult. For one thing, the period in which identity for-

mation now takes place often culminates when people are in

their mid- and late-thirties, so we’ll wait on the results. But

their connections with Jewish communal experience are power-

ful and vital, and it’s special for me when I

get a call out of nowhere to get together

with any of them. I love to hear about

what they are doing, about where they are

figuring out the next stages of their lives. In

some cases, they have become active mem-

bers of synagogue communities elsewhere.

In other cases, they are partnered with oth-

ers, building their own Jewish lives, raising

Jewish kids, emulating their own positive

experiences and wanting more. This is

what Jewish continuity is all about – raising

a generation that can take the toolbox and

use it skillfully and joyously, to figure out

the complex universe around them and to design a world that is

more compassionate and morally present. What’s more, they

embrace the fullness of being Jewish well into the twenty-first

century. -Rabbi Joey

Steve Lebwohl with Benny, Rachel and Bekah. Rachel (whose last name is Oh now) partnered with Emily Teplin Fox to lead this year’s Tashlich Service. Mariah Lebwohl (not pictured here) teaches in Havurah’s Shabbat School and serves on the Rabbi Search Committee.

Arielle Rosenberg, daughter of Ilene Safyan and Mark Rosenberg, is now a rabbinical student at Hebrew College and on staff as an intern at B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper Westside of Manhattan.

6

Fired Up! News

HAKOL October 2015

We’ve had some great Fired Up! events over the past few months! Now is the time to sign up for events this fall. We have something for everyone – Havurah happenings for every member of the family! The goal of Fired Up! is to help Havurah members connect with others in community, while con-tributing to support many Havurah programs and financial needs.

Don’t miss out on the fun! Get out your calendar and register today!

Register for all events at: https://hav.ejoinme.org/?tabid=667725

Square Dancing @Havurah Shalom

Saturday, October 24th 6:30 – 8:30 pm

$18 for one, $36 maximum per family Includes dance instruction and snacks

All Ages Welcome!! Shabbat School Families – Pizza dinner

available for additional cost

https://hav.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/FiredUp/SquareDancePartyOctober242015

Roller Skating at Oaks Park

Sunday, October 4th, 3:00 – 5:00 pm

$18 for one, $36 maximum per family Skate rental and snacks included

https://hav.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/FiredUp/

RollerSkatingOaksParkOctober42015

Pancakes, Pajamas & Kids’ Concert Sunday, November 15th

9:30 – 11:15 am

Join us for Pancakes, a Pajama Parade, and a fantastic concert with Havurah’s own Margie Rosenthal and Ilene Safyan!

$18 for one, $27 for two, $36 maximum per family

https://hav.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/FiredUp/ PancakesPajamasKidsConcertNov152015

7 HAKOL October 2015

Fired Up!

Havurah's Tzedakah volunteering project with Portland Homeless Family Solutions

(PHFS)

These were the Havurah Shalom Goose Hollow Volunteers for September 10, 2015: Meal Providers: Tom, Steve, Karen & Sidney

Life Lab Instructor: Sidney Kid Hosts: Melanie and daughter, Gloria

Helping Hand: Fran Overnight Host: Jay (and shelter staff)

Your name could be here!!

Next volunteer orientation: Tues Oct. 6. Next Havurah volunteer night: Thurs Oct. 8 Join us!! Contact Gloria Halper: losninos6@gmail.com for more information

Havurah is a partner organization for the upcoming Confronting Extremism Symposium by the Oregon Jewish Museum. The October 8th screening of HATE, a documentary depict-ing the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe, will include a discussion with director Nadav Eyal. There will also be a panel on racism, ex-tremism, hate groups and hate speech in our community. Tickets available at OJM-CHE.org

Stack’em Chai Texas Hold’em Tourney October 10, 2015 at 7:00pm

Join Havurah for a great poker night! Open to all!

Initial buy-in gets you $5,000 in chips. Rebuy and add-on opportunities

are $25 each. Dealers/tables provided by Ubetcha Entertainment

$600 guaranteed purse (paid out in bank debit cards) based on a minimum of 30 players.

Beer, wine, soft drinks and great snacks provided.

Minors must attend with parent or guardian

https://hav.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/FiredUp/PokerPartyOctober102015

Table Sponsor $118 Regular Admission $54 Under 21 Admission $25 Additional buy-ins $25

Non-registered players arriving the night of the tourney admitted only if seats are available

Questions: contact Dave Weil at dave3082@aol.com or 503-293-6806

Cooking Classes

Sunday, October 18th – Blintzes

Sunday, November 1st – Challah

Sunday, November 8th- Gluten-free Baking

$18 per class -- All classes 1:00 – 3:00 pm

https://hav.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/

FiredUp/

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Tributes

HAKOL October 2015

Upcoming Theatre & Discussion

“Tommy J and Sally” A play by Tony Award winning playwright

Mark Medoff A two character play on race relations – a modern

twist on Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson There will be a talkback program hosted by the Fed-eration after the performances on October Saturday Oct 17th @ 7:00pm & Sunday October 18th @ 3:00pm At the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center for more

information call the Federation office: 503 245-6219

The Institute for Judaic Studies Presents the

10th

Annual Weekend in Quest Date: March 4 – 6, 2016 Location: Holiday Inn Ex-press, Astoria, Oregon

Is There a Future for Jewish Peoplehood? presented by Professor Noam Pianko of the

University of Washington Judaic Studies Department

Shabbat Services and Saturday evening entertainment presented by David Fuks.

www.weekendinquest.org

for more information and to register.

Questions: Contact Mimi Epstein at mimiepstein42@comcast.net

Havurah Shalom is a co-sponsor of this event.

Music Fund Margie Rosenthal, in memory of Muriel & Burton Kieffer Fran & Tom Berg, in honor of Alanna Hein & Evan King’s wedding Fran & Tom Berg, in memory of Lou Cohn High Holidays Fund Sam Sirkin, in memory of Helen Sirkin Susan & Jack Lazareck, in honor of Alanna Hein and Evan King’s wedding Mark Rosenbaum Tikkun Olam Carol Gelfer & Joe Sullivan, in memory of Florence Gelfer Ted Scheinman, in memory of Daniel & Ester Scheinman Nancy Spigal, in honor of Alanna Hein & Evan King Sandy Ramirez, in memory of Irene Richman, David Akers, and Leo Rodden Endowment Fund The Garland-Forshee family, in honor of Alanna Hein & Evan King’s wedding Roz Basin, in honor of Alanna Hein & Evan King Roz Basin, in honor of Carmella Ettinger & Ruth Thomas

Rabbi Discretionary Fund Maria Lisa Johnson, in honor of Alanna Hein & Evan King’s wedding Alanna Hein & Evan King, with gratitude for their wedding Shabbat School Fund Nancy Spigal, in honor of Amira Darling Budner Joey Wolf Education Fund Abigail Webb, in memory of Pamela Webb Youth Activities Fund Sue Danielson, in honor of her grandson’s Bar Mitzvah General Operations Wendy & Steve Rudman, in memory of Frankie Erickson Naomi Strauss, in honor of Carol Chestler’s special birth-day Karen & Alan Westerman, in honor of Alanna Hein & Evan King’s Wedding Roz Basin, in honor and appreciation of Emily Simon Evan Rosenfeld, in honor of Carol Chestler’s birthday Mark Rosenbaum

This month’s early Hakol deadline means some tributes may be missing—stay tuned for the next Hakol if your donation isn’t listed

Astoria

9

Bulletin Board

It’s been an incredible month for Havurah Vol-unteers! Thank you to everyone who made our High Holidays a great success. We couldn’t have done it without the over 150 volunteers… almost one-third of our membership committed themselves to one or more shifts during the High Holidays. Too may names to list here, but THANK YOU! Special thanks to our Wednesday letter writing volunteers: Debra Shein, Robin Issacson DeWeese, Arleen Slive, Karen Labinger, Adele Thompson, Dick Mastbrook, Rich Eichen, & Su-san Lazareck Thank you to Al Westerman for changing all the lightbulbs in Havurah and keeping our syna-gogue bright! Thank you to Rick Zucker for your office admin-istration help in the lead up to High Holidays

Unsung Heroes

Mah Jongg Sunday Oct 4, 3:00-5:00 pm

Please bring a snack to share and a Mah Jongg table if you have one.

If you plan on coming and are not on the Havurah Mah Jongg list, please contact Gloria Halper

at losninos6@gmail.com.

Condolences

Gilda Nimer, mother of Wendy Gordon and mother-in-law of Zak

Gordon, passed away in August

HaMakon Y’nachem….

May we all be comforted.

In October Havurah Shalom will call to the Torah the following Bnai

Mitzvah

Saturday October 24 Eli Mesulam

Son of Julia Lager-Mesulam & Steven Mesulam

Saturday October 31 Sam Duncan-Doroff

Son of Holly Duncan and Sue Doroff

Please join Eli, Sam, and their families in celebration and welcome them to

our community.

MAZEL TOV!

New Havurah Members

Josh Erde-Wollheim

HAKOL October 2015

Eli Mesulam’s Bar Mitzvah Project: 4Worlds United Soccer Alliance

This summer Eli volunteered for an incredible program called 4Worlds United Soccer Alliance. This non-profit “works to bridge the gap between 1st and 3rd world children by bringing them together to play soccer”. This program provides oppor-tunities for these kids, and their families, to help them develop long-standing relationship and skills that they can carry with them. Please check out their website - www.4worldsunited.org and consider making a donation - www.4worldsunited.org/donate. Your support will help enrich the lives of children and connect them to our community.

Two Havurah musicians voted in the top 21 Jewish Musicians in America

Last month The Forward magazine presented the results of a read-er-inspired survey to find the best new voices in Jewish Music – and Havurah is proud to count two of our own within the top 21 in the country! Thank you and congratulations to Ilene Safyan and Beth Hamon for keeping our services and lives filled with beautiful mu-sic.

New players are always welcome!

10 HAKOL October 2015

Calendar

11

Tikkun Olam

HAKOL October 2015

In the Beginning: a Short History of the Hebrew Language By Joel M. Hoffman

By the time that you read this review, I will have finished In the Beginning and reluctantly returned it to the library. From what I have discovered so far, I en-courage you to delve into the book. Let me give you a taste. Author Joel M. Hoffman writes that the Hebrews—or whatever you want to call them—"began an experiment in writing that would change the world." Hoffman starts with a mini-lesson in linguistics that takes us up to about 3,000 years ago, when the Hebrews made an innovation on the simplified consonant-based writing system of their neighboring Phoenicians. Hebrew writing doubled up on three con-sonants—h, w, and y—for use as vowel sounds as well. What a difference a vowel makes! "The Hebrew alphabet proved wildly successful," Hoffman writes. "Hebrew was used as the basis for the Greek and Latin alphabets, which, in turn, along with Hebrew itself, were destined to form the basis for almost all of the world's alphabets." The how and why, and what has happened since, form the book's focus on language, history, and culture. Hoffman holds a doctorate in theoretical linguistics, and it shows. Some sections require a close reading to understand. Scholarly appendices explore the fine points in even finer detail. However, Hoffman's overall writing style is easy to follow, and there's nothing heretical about skipping bits that might not interest you. In the Begin-ning provides a solid foundation in ancient Hebrew and the challenges of the rebirth of Hebrew as a spoken lan-guage. Whether you have a strong knowledge of Hebrew or rely on transliteration, there's something in Hoffman's book that you would enjoy. -Ruth Feldman www.ruthtenzerfeldman.com

From Our Library

Why Tikkun Olam is Revolutionary “The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff.” – Alice Walker When I was asked to join Havurah’s Tikkun Olam committee a few years ago, I saw it as an oppor-tunity to put Alice Walker’s definition of revolution into action. The conventional image of a revolutionary – brandishing a gun, fist raised in defiance – never in-spired me much; the violence inherent in that picture alienated me, even while I recognize that few revolu-tions – in the political sense – occur without violence of some sort. Revolutions of a different kind are happening all around us; most of them are not geopolitical but per-sonal. The “least glamorous stuff” Walker refers to epitomizes all of our current Tikkun Olam projects: serving meals to homeless families at the Goose Hol-low Shelter and spending time with their children while the homeless adults take life classes; providing clean drinking water to the villagers of El Jocote, Nicaragua,

which eliminates the need for girls and women to trudge four miles round trip to fetch water and allows the villag-ers to grow their own food in family gardens; champion-ing LGBTQIA rights; helping developing nations pay down their crippling foreign debt burdens; supporting immigrants’ rights by lobbying for humane policies, or building homes for low income people through Tivnu: Building Justice. These are just a few of the programs Havurah currently supports, and all of them generate revolutions in the lives of the people they impact. Governments rise and fall, but the revolutionary acts of feeding a hungry child, teaching an illiterate adult to read, or helping a homeless family find permanent housing can last a lifetime. Join our unglamorous revolu-tion! Liz Schwartz (Co-Chair, Tikkun Olam Committee) Join us in our unglamorous revolution! Go to http://havurahshalom.org/community/tikkun-olam/ for a com-plete list of our activities, or contact Co-Chairs Liz Schwartz (schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com) or Chris Coug-lin (chriscoughlin60@gmail.com) if you have ideas for other Tikkun Olam work at Havurah.

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Non-Profit Org. US Postage

PAID Portland OR

Permit No. 2180

Havurah Shalom 825 NW 18th Ave Portland OR 97209-2333

Address label here

Address Service Requested

KABBALAT SHABBAT DINNER

Friday, November 13th Dinner at 6:30 pm; Services at 7:30 pm

Cost adjustments for the dinner are available. Contact the Havurah office for information.

Dinner will provide dairy-free, gluten-free, & nut-free

choices.

You are invited to bring wine/juice to celebrate

Dinner Reservations are required by Friday November 6

Please mail the completed form (right) with payment to the Havurah office

OR register online at

https://hav.ejoinme.org/kabbalatshabbatdinner

Kabbalat Shabbat Registration Form First and Last Name(s) for name tag(s): ______________________________________________________________________________________ Number of adults (ages 13+) _________ $14.50 each = _________ Number of children ages 4 to 12 _________ $5.00 each = _________ Number of children ages 3 & under ________ No Charge Consider an extra donation to help others attend = __________ Total Enclosed: _________