Community begins to explore how to reach all area's Jews

By AMY R. KAUFMAN

article created on: 2008-10-01T00:00:00

Why don’t more Portland Jews partake of community Shabbat dinners, enroll in Judaic studies courses, attend synagogues, join Jewish sports and social clubs, assume leadership roles, derive spiritual sustenance and a sense of belonging from their extended family of Jews in Portland?

People from all avenues of Jewish life gathered at the MJCC Sept. 16 to hear four speakers and to start a dialogue on how the Portland Jewish community can better support the needs of Jews of all ages and backgrounds. Their ideas will guide the efforts of a task force on “outreach and engagement,” one of four groups convened by the Leadership Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.

Daniel Z. Lepow, formerly a regional director of the Jewish Agency for Israel and now JFGP’s director of community development, is the staff leader and coordinator of the process, which will use ideas from a cross-section of the community to plan for the future.

“The Jewish soul seeks meaning and spirituality, and if he can’t find it in Judaism, he looks elsewhere,” said Rabbi Motti Wilhelm, director of Chabad’s Jewish Learning Institute.

Sharing Judaism begins with “a personal passion for Judaism,” he said. “What does it do for me? If I lost my faith, how devastated would I be? Only then can I share the meaning and joy of Judaism with another.”

When we seek to help others, he said, our first priority should be “to enrich their lives,” not to support our organizations.

He said the nine self-supporting Chabad centers in Oregon are evidence that “Jews are interested in Judaism. Just meet them where they are,” he said.

Rabbi Laurie Rutenberg and Rabbi Gary Schoenberg have devoted their lives to “outreach” through Gesher, a unique rabbinate that the Oregonian has described as “a bridge home.”

“We came here with a vision of a community that reached unaffiliated Jews and understood them,” said Rutenberg. “In the last 20 years we have reached 8,000 people at our family Shabbat dinners. … We offered an invitation to everyone. No more than a handful didn’t accept.”

Rutenberg said the guests at her expansive Shabbat table “learn to replicate the experience in their own way, with their own talents,” and soon they are welcoming guests into their homes for Shabbat dinner.

“The lack of home life is pervasive in America, and Jews aren’t any different, but we have a gift to share,” she said. “We must have multiplicity of outreach, but home must be the core.”

Schoenberg said it is the ability to make a home that has enabled Judaism to thrive for four millennia.

“We were like Abraham in his tent, open and ready to welcome,” he said, “until the last two generations, when we sought to replace the home with institutional life. This is a demographic holocaust in which we have already lost at least two million Jews.”

Schoenberg said we must extend a genuine welcome “if we are to reclaim Jews on the move who have disconnected from positive Jewish memory.”

“We have moved to a culture with insufficient welcome,” he said.

Linda Singer, community concierge at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center, directs newcomers to the resources and facilities they need. She said visitors praise the Portland Jewish community and want to move here, but we shouldn’t wait for someone else to invite them home and make them feel connected.

Singer said the goal is to make Portland “the friendliest, most welcoming city in the world.”

While joking that he doesn’t understand text messaging or Facebook, Rob Shlachter, former president of JFGP and a founding board member of the Portland-area Hillel, gave an insightful portrait of young Jews and the rich offerings available to them in Portland.

“They don’t need newspapers and may not be interested in traditional synagogues,” he said. “They move from city to city and career to career—some work from home, so they are harder to reach.”

Ten years ago, he said, “there was no such thing as Machar, Portland Hillel, Moishe House, Urban Jews, Keshet, the UofO and PSU Judaic studies programs, 1-800-Shabbat, Portland Jewish Events, the Mosaic Club or Kayam(?),” among other programs.

He said Portland attracts a lot of creative young people, and the community should be “nimble enough” to support innovative projects.

“The organizational Jewish community sometimes needs to get out of the way of the new idea … and give mentoring and financial support to allow (new ideas) to be nurtured,” he said.

For example, he said, JFGP “offered scholarships to enable members of Machar to attend Melton, and major donors gave seed money to start Portland Hillel.”

“We can be fabulous catalysts without much capital,” he said.

Sarah Liebman, director of Portland’s Florence Melton Adult Mini-School and founder of Machar and Urban Jews PDX, may be one of the young people Shlachter was referring to when he said, “Luckily, some individuals who were teenagers in 1998 were self-made leaders and did not fall off the turnip truck.”

In a powerful impromptu statement, Liebman said all Jews should be embraced by the Jewish community from cradle to grave and should never feel separated from it.