Admission
A Community of Cultures
Jewish Life at Reed
Campus Groups
A Few Sample Reed Courses
Sample Reed Theses
Portland Resources
More Questions?
Campus Groups
Chaverim (friends) is Reed’s Jewish student union. Like all campus organizations,
it is organized and run by students, which means that it is quite fluid and can change dramatically
from year to year. In recent memory, Chaverim has organized frequent Shabbat dinners,
as well as holiday observances (including Sukkot, Pesach, break-the-fast for Yom Kippur and Purim) and has helped students connect
with other Jewish students at events like “bagels and shmeer.” Chaverim also connects
with Reed’s Multicultural Resource Center and the broader Portland Jewish community. Of the
incoming students, approximately 12% over the last few years tell our internal research folks
that they are Jewish. This is the largest religious preference noted for any of the organized
religions. Because it is something of a Reed tradition to resist categorization, there are undoubtedly
more Jewish students lurking out there.
Rosh Chodesh celebrates the new moon and the beginning of each Jewish month. It has become an
important women's holiday and is also celebrated by a special blessing in the synagogue service.
Reed's Rosh Chodesh group meets most months on or near Rosh Chodesh to celebrate women's traditions
and spiritual renewal.
Reed recently received an anonymous gift of $135,266 to support a chair in Jewish literature and culture studies for two years. This new tenure-track professor in the Russian department will focus on the literature, film, and theatre of eastern and central European Jews. Steven M. Wasserstrom is the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and Humanities, the author of Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos, and Between Muslim and Jew: the problem of symbiosis under early Islam.
Courses in Hebrew and a wide variety of other topics are also available for credit through Portland State University, just a short bus ride from Reed. This summer there will be a not-for-credit course taught at Reed.
A Few Sample Reed Courses
- Biblical Narrative: Genesis and After
- Holocaust Literature
- Introduction to Judaism
- Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought
- Jewish American Literature & Culture, American Studies Seminar: The Promised Land
- Jews and Others: Jewish American Literature, Culture, and Identity, 1700-200
- Kabbalah
- Medieval Jewish Thought in the Muslim World
- Modern German Jewish Writers: Emancipation and Its Discontents
- Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Visual Arts
- selections from Humanities 110, including: Hebrew Bible, Josephus, and Pirke Avot
Sample Reed Theses
The appearance and disappearance of Eastern European Jewish immigrant women and their daughters in the labor movement in New York, 1881-1924 (history)
Ben Shahn: Hebrew letters and the problem of Jewish identity (art)
Bringing the Other into View: Jewish Views of Palestinian-Arabs, 1900–39 (History)
Day of the Living Dead: The Spirit Possession Paradigm in Early Modern Yiddish (religion)
The development of Hell in ancient Judaism (religion)
Expanding the boundaries of normative Judaism in the Middle Ages: an historical study of the magical texts from the Cairo Geniza (religion)
The figure of the jew in five works by Anton Chekhov (Russian)
Franz Rosenzweig: A Rediscovery of Revelation (religion)
Homemade “Haggadot”: A Study of Contemporary Jewish Ritual Practice & Identity
(religion)
Jewish-American Absurdist Tragicomedy: Saul Bellow’s ‘Humboldt’s Gift’ and Woody Allen’s ‘Annie Hall’ (English)
Jewish-Christianity in the 1980’s: The Theory and Practice of “Messian Judaism” (religion)
Jews, liberalism, and anti-semitism in fin-de-siecle Vienna (history)
Judeo-Spanish and the Success of the Standard: A Case Study of Standard Language Ideology’s Role in Language Shift (Linguistics)
Nietzsche and the roots of existential Judaism (history)
An oral history of the Shanghai Jewish community (history)
Persistent Identity System : The Conflicted Religious Assimilation Of The Beta Israel Into Israel (anthropology)
Safe harbor: Japanese antisemitism, foreign policy, and the Jewish refugee crisis in Shanghai, 1938-1939 (history)
Scenes of Recognition: The Representation of the Judio-Converso in Early Modern Spanish Drama (Spanish)
A Sense of Doubleness in Twentieth Century Literature by Two Jewish American Writers (MALS)
Socialist
pioneers in early Israel (International Comparative Policy Studies)
The Third sibylline oracle and Jewish identity in Ptolemaic Egypt (classics/religion)
Traditionalizing Jewish worship in the lives of Portland women (religion)
Unpardonable Heresy: The Excommunication of Sholem Asch (English)
Portland Resources
Portland is home to a wide variety of synagogues, including Conservative, Hassidic, Humanistic, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, Renewal, Sephardic, and Traditional, as well as minyanim, including egalitarian, gay and transgender and women’s t’fillah. High Holiday tickets are available for students for free and Chaverim helps to organize carpools and overnight stays for those who are shomer chagim. The Jewish Community Center in Southwest Portland offers a variety of cultural and educational programs. Portland also hosts a yearly Jewish Film Festival and is home to the Oregon Jewish Museum. Additional groups exist in Portland including Jews for Global Justice, B’rit Tzedek v’Shalom, and the American Jewish Committee’s Coalition Against Hate Crimes. There are even Portland Jews on JDate!
Additional websites to view:
http://www.oregonjcc.org
http://www.ojm.org
http://www.jewishportland.com
For information about kosher food in Portland, email professor Laura Leibman at Laura.Leibman@reed.edu.
More questions?
Email Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz ‘05, assistant dean of admission, at avigail@reed.edu.
