We Need to Communicate

Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Although he wasn’t talking about Jewish communal infrastructure, he might as well have been.

When we apply his rubric to our modern-day infrastructure, we see a landscape that is woefully inadequate to address the paramount problem of tomorrow and, to a more alarming extent, today: the war of public perception.

Our communal failure to adapt rapidly enough to shifts in how information is created, sought out and processed is eroding our community’s ability to define ourselves and accomplish fundamental common goals — from promoting Jewish pride and identity to defining the value of anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions laws.

This strategic communications vacuum enables detractors of Israel to leverage digital media to malign Israel and sow relentless doubt and division, even among increasing numbers of young American Jews, mainstreaming anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Our challenge is not a lack of ideas. Rather, it is a dramatic misallocation of funding in our community.

The success of America’s Jewish community rests on a three-legged stool. The first leg, lobbying and politics, educates and builds relationships with decision makers, hopefully helping to turn ideas into legislation that’s good for America and good for Israel. We invest in this work at a high rate, in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, with great effect.

Second are think tanks, crafting ideas to strengthen America and Israel — from Birthright and synagogues to Jewish Community Centers and social service organizations, all of which seek to enhance Jewish continuity. The vast preponderance of our philanthropic dollars, quite literally tens of billions, are invested here annually.

The third leg is strategic communications, increasingly critical to defining ourselves and conventional wisdom. If what we want to accomplish is falsely, but successfully, smeared as bad for America, we will lose. Today, everything our kids believe about Israel, what their peers think about Israel and Jews, and what Capitol Hill staffers believe is being defined and shaped in new, powerful ways.

This third domain is barely funded by our community: Less than $10 million a year is spent on strategic-communications efforts today. That figure must change if we plan to have any meaningful impact on our shared destiny.

Early in the 20th century, Jews in America were indigent — we couldn’t feed ourselves — so we built the infrastructure and organizations to thrive. After World War II, it was refugees and the nascent State of Israel. Later, the community came together and built the infrastructure to face down the threat to Soviet Jewry.

We should be proud. During the past 125 years, we have addressed the great existential problems facing our people and overcome incredible obstacles to build a foundation for thriving Jewish life.

Today, however, the threat facing Jewish peoplehood is again different and we do not have the infrastructure we need to survive. Our fight today cannot be solved through brick-and-mortar institutions. Instead, we must build a communications infrastructure designed to fight delegitimization and anti-Semitism hidden in anti-Israel sentiment.

Our challenge is not a lack of ideas, but a dramatic misallocation of funding.

Cisco estimates that by 2018, 86 percent of communications will be visual. More than 50 percent of Americans get all their news on Facebook. More people will watch video content online than on ABC, NBC and CBS combined.

Organizations like The Israel Project, which I run, are leading the way in using data-driven solutions and developing new platforms to fundamentally change public opinion on Israel and world Jewry.

Fortunately, the investment required to change course before it is too late is a fraction of what is already being allocated. With a few elite organizations like mine driving innovation and change, it is up to funders and philanthropists to step up and adjust their allocations to make room — at least 5 percent of annual distributions — to invest and expand this critical domain.

I recently asked a community leader if he agreed that our community and Israel face different threats than five or 10 years ago, and if those different challenges require different strategies. Yes, he said. So I asked him, “What is the definition of insanity?” Hearing himself give the answer, he understood immediately. It is critical for all of us to adjust and make room for this work, and make it a priority.

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Josh Block is CEO and president of The Israel Project.

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My Rant Against Conformity

As I write, Facebook feeds me a story of a play at a prestigious university that satirized political correctness and was shut down for offending political sensitivities. It’s unclear why any political beliefs should be beyond mockery, but zealous indignation seems to be the spirit of the age.

The 1960s had their liberation, the ’90s their chemical utopianism, and today we have the tyranny of offense. It seems as if every week another speaker is shut down, bullied out of a college auditorium or drowned out by the shrill protests of pious 18-year-olds acting as our own morality police.

Enabled by feckless administrators, their inability to stomach ideas even mildly at odds with their facile dogmas is suffocating our public discourse. We’ve come to accept the shutting down of some discomfiting opinions as outright sacrilege, and the imposition of others as de rigueur. This, in the age of ISIS.

The yearning for soothing certitudes, for truths set in stone, is strong in our species. Our urge to organize around shared myths is hardwired in us, a product of evolution’s hardest-fought battles. But slavery to ideological idols is what characterizes the most shameful chapters of our past — as it does the worst societies of our present. The imposition of one group’s preferred ideology and the silencing of others by intimidation is what happens in dictatorships. It shouldn’t be happening on an American college campus.

Oceans of blood have been spilled and centuries devastated in humanity’s effort to extricate itself from the beguiling embrace of ideological conformity. The price of our evolution, of science and progress, is the ability to tolerate ideological diversity, slay taboos and brush off offense. Today, that sacred history seems to be forgotten, the 30-Year War eclipsed by the 30-second attention span, enlightenment with sanctimonious hypersensitivity and entitled imposition.

We are boldly going where man has been before, charging headlong into a past where truth is a slave to tradition, where humility and empathy are very much absent. Driven by those who would presume to impose morality on us, we are returning to where the most dysfunctional and repressive states on our planet still reside. How long before our fragile students start to riot in response to unflattering cartoons?

As in Middle Eastern tyrannies, some of our temples of learning are becoming the epicenters of the new, dogmatic obscurantism. College campuses have come to resemble inquisition courts. Rather than smashing idols as should be their calling, far too many professors seem instead to serve as high priests of the cult of conformity, sacrificing young minds on the altar of their dogmas. Brown has become our Riyadh, Berkeley our Karachi.

Enter stage left, the Antifa Intifada. In 2017 America, it is to be expected that people promoting the freedom to express unpopular ideas are routinely smeared as Nazis — the modern version of devil worshippers — and violently assaulted as heretics by masked mobs possessed by zealous righteousness.

And, not unrelated, university administrators are ever more eager to serve as guardians of gender virtue. The wave of revealed alleged assaults — by those Tinseltown folks most likely to be loudly preaching a new sexual morality to the rest of us — should not in any way be dismissed. It is a tragic thing to see so many women reputedly abused by so many men. But the answer to that abuse is not for the state to insert itself between men and women — in the bedroom, on campuses — as it has. Rather than teaching responsibility and respect to our young, we have let the state dictate how to manage youthful sexuality in our colleges. In an overreaction to the reported abuse of some, innocent flirting by the many becomes more risky, more threatening, more at odds with ever-narrowing and sanitized speech codes.

Undergirding this sorry spectacle is the new national pastime of collective schadenfreude, not unlike that of medieval mobs tossing rotten produce at the condemned or Middle Eastern imbeciles celebrating the murder of others by handing out oily sweets. So, too, today is it sport to watch from behind our monitors the others who crash and burn under public opprobrium, whether they deserve it or not.

And, of course, underneath this belligerent, subjective and arbitrary moralism is wall-to-wall anti-Zionism. In the East as in the West, attitudes toward Israel seem to be the litmus test for determining when people have lost their minds along with their humility.

Welcome to a Western caliphate, where good intentions buttressed by rigid dogma and moral posturing are turning disagreement into sin, sexuality into a minefield, and the future into the past.

And as in the past, the path to liberty and light must be paved but with deliberate desecration. For the only way to deal with those who fly into hysterics at any minor slight is to make them numb to offense by repeated exposure.

Those who love the freedom to think and feel as they wish would do well to find someone to offend, and quickly.

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Philippe Assouline is a lawyer and doctoral candidate in international relations and political psychology at UCLA.

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Roy and Al

So, now we know.

We know that credibility of accusers is less important than political identity of the accused.

We know that the extent of criminality is less important than how the accused criminal votes on matters of key importance. We know that standards don’t apply to our elected officials. That’s the clear and transparent message from elected officials and commentators of both political sides this month.

On the right, the refusal to hold Alabama Senate Republican nominee Roy Moore accountable for highly credible allegations of molestation of underage girls has captured national headlines. And it should: Top members of the party that suggested that Bill Clinton had to leave office thanks to his sexual misconduct are suddenly coy about whether Moore ought to step down.

Make no mistake: He should. His female accusers haven’t just told their stories, they’ve provided verifiable details, and Moore has offered no serious defense other than half-hearted accusations of forgeries and suggestions that he’s never even met the women.

Were the situation reversed, there’s little doubt that Republicans would be calling for Moore’s head.

In fact, the situations are reversed. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), it turns out, was photographed years ago as he apparently groped a woman named Leeann Tweeden as she slept. He also used a rehearsal to allegedly ram his tongue down her throat. Franken, who has sounded off routinely on the evils of sexual harassment, allegedly wasn’t above engaging in some of that himself.

And the same Democrats who have called for Moore to step down are defending Franken — or at least tacitly letting him off the hook. Most Democrats have suggested a Senate ethics committee investigation, the political version of a toothless tiger: From 2007 to 2016, despite 613 matters referred to the committee, zero sanctions have been put in place by that body. There’s a reason Franken himself has called for such an ethics committee investigation.

The defenses for Moore and Franken are identical — they’re both too valuable to their parties to go. Moore’s defenders will sometimes admit, in moments of clarity, that they don’t care about the allegations against him; he’ll be a vote in favor of their priorities. And Franken’s defenders do the same. They say that if Franken goes, that may pave the way for the ouster of other Democratic politicians — and it’s not worth fighting sexual assault and harassment just to turn over the Senate to those Neanderthal Republicans.

On both sides, the only people we’re comfortable condemning are those who are no longer useful to us politically. You haven’t heard any right-wing defenses of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert or former Sen. Larry Craig lately. And on the left, it’s little trouble to admit that Ted Kennedy was evil in his treatment of women — eight years after his death. And it’s no trouble for Democrats to finally come around to the conclusion that Bill Clinton was a cad and a probable sexual assailant — he lost his utility right around the time Hillary Clinton lost her election bid.

Sure, Democrats of the time called Republicans puritanical for suggesting that Clinton had somehow mistreated Monica Lewinsky, and protested deafeningly when Donald Trump brought up Juanita Broaddrick during the 2016 cycle. But now we’re supposed to take them seriously — if they could do it all over again, they would have stood against Bill’s sexual malfeasance.

Are we defending politicians because we believe they’re innocent, or because it’s convenient for us to think they are?

Riiiiight.

So, what should we, Americans who purportedly care about morality, do? We need to examine our motives. Are we defending politicians because we believe they’re innocent, or because it’s convenient for us to think they are? Are we willing to take a temporary political hit on behalf of a better country — and, yes, better candidates? Or are we so ensconced in the false binary of momentary politics that we’re willing to have a Senate full of alleged child molesters and sexual assaulters?

The answer is probably the latter. If so, let’s be big enough to admit it, instead of using mistreatment of women as a club to beat our enemies, while ignoring it to suit our friends. Otherwise, we’re not just part of the problem — we’re hypocrites, to boot.

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Ben Shapiro is a best-selling author, editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire and host of the conservative podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show.”

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The Privilege of Gratitude

About a decade ago, when I was trying desperately to conceive, I read an essay by a woman who was traumatized by the fact that her obstetrician had to use last-minute medical intervention during the delivery of her baby. She had spent months, she explained, taking every measure to ensure that she would have a natural childbirth. And then: She had to succumb to “Western medicine.” The fact that she ended up delivering a healthy baby was only one sentence in her 3,000-word essay.

At the time I read this, I hadn’t realized how her essay was emblematic of a much larger victimization culture. I just remember thinking: Wow, this woman is truly ungrateful.

Today, of course, victim status has become a privileged achievement. Forget innovation or helping to improve the world. What gets you published on the cool websites is being able to detail a horrible thing that “society” has done to you, and nursing those wounds for as much empathy (pity?) as you can get.

Leaving aside the potential harm to their targets, I have come to feel sorry for our modern-day victim junkies. For one, they have confused theory for reality. They appear to have learned — perhaps at an esteemed university? — that the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed, victimizers and victims, and every encounter can classify you — “privilege” you — as a victim, a revered member of the oppressed class.

What they don’t seem to have learned is that Marxism failed precisely because Marx forgot to take into account human nature. Human nature is complex. Life isn’t perfect. Bad things happen.

Victimization theory has been trying to create a fabricated world where humanity can be perfected. Humanity cannot be perfected, only improved. And, of course, one victim’s oppressor is often another person’s savior. The same “Western medicine” that this woman bemoaned enabled me to deliver a healthy boy two years later.

But there’s a more essential point: Why would you want to be a victim? My older brother tormented me for nearly 15 years. He caused my first set of stitches. I could have wallowed throughout my teens and 20s; instead, at 16 I started dating his best friend. That ended that.

My brother went on to become a successful doctor who loves and respects me. He also went on to go through two massive tragedies that put my childhood victimization instantly into perspective. His first wife was run over by a car. His second son died during delivery. He too could have wallowed in a victim state. Instead, he grieved deeply, and then gently moved on.

If we’re going to be honest about human nature, let’s acknowledge that embracing a victim status can be tempting. I was tempted myself recently, when I was working on a book project and someone tried to sabotage it. For months, I got so caught up in that mindset that I didn’t allow myself to fully enjoy the project, and the positivity it was generating.

When you wallow in victim status, there is no room to feel gratitude.

Which leads me back to my initial point: When you wallow in victim status, there is no room to feel gratitude, and it is the ability to feel gratitude that is one of life’s great privileges. It is the ability to stop for a few minutes each day and appreciate our children, our friends, the beauty of life. Even those of us who have not been brainwashed by victimization theory often forget to feel gratitude. Yes, we do after sickness or tragedy, but the elevated life is to find gratitude in the mundane.

I have a Facebook friend in India who sends me a meme of gratitude every night. Initially, I found it odd (I had never interacted with him), and then, when life wasn’t going well, I’d find it annoying. But I’ve come to think of these memes as welcome daily reminders.

And you know the funny thing about gratitude? When we allow ourselves to feel it, the fact that we and life are not perfect becomes an afterthought. Life, however messed up it is at times, is indeed beautiful, and each moment is indeed a blessing. And when you learn to look for the light, it will find you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic and author of “The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World” (Doubleday). Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal and Metropolis, among others.

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Make America Grateful Again

America is in a lousy mood.

Everything is a mess. This is how Matthew Continetti describes the state of the nation in National Review Online:

“Riots and the suppression of freedoms on campus, drug addiction, deadly clashes between white nationalists and left-wing radicals, increasing numbers of hate crimes, mass shootings, bitter arguments over the national anthem … a cascading stream of allegations of sexual impropriety against figures in entertainment and in politics, the slow-motion disintegration of our major parties — it’s as if America itself has been thrown into the midst of a demolition derby, with every one of our prominent figures and major institutions targeted for destruction by Monster Truck.”

Given this chaos, how are we supposed to feel grateful this Thanksgiving?

I have a friend who says you can’t feel grateful until you first take a deep breath. This breath helps us relax so we can meditate on the big picture. So, what’s the big picture?

Well, first, there is our tradition. In Judaism, gratitude is a core virtue. The very root of the word Jewish in Hebrew means gratitude. The Talmud instructs us to say 100 blessings a day. And each morning, no matter how horrible the news is, the first blessing we make is Modei Ani — we thank God for returning our souls to us.

Beyond our tradition, though, there’s also that thing called happiness.

As psychologist and author Melanie Greenberg writes in Psychology Today, “Gratitude is an attitude and way of living that has been shown to have many benefits in terms of health, happiness, satisfaction with life, and the way we relate to others.”

If gratitude is so connected to our happiness and well-being, why doesn’t it come to us more naturally?

Maybe we’re simply not hardwired to seek happiness. “Our brains’ natural tendency,” Greenberg writes, “is to focus on threats, worries and negative aspects of life.”

In a way, that makes sense. How can we improve if we don’t worry about our mistakes? How can we repair the world if we don’t look at what’s broken?

The problem comes when negativity turns into a state of mind. The media have an inherent interest in focusing on the darkness — on the threats, the chaos and the crises. If we allow this negativity to permeate our consciousness, we won’t see much hope. We will wallow in the  world’s brokenness rather than working to repair it.

I sense that this is happening in much of the country right now. We have little faith in our leaders. The problems feel endemic, not fixable. We’re hopelessly divided. On top of that, when the media remind us all day long of this brokenness, our brains’ tendency to focus on “threats, worries and negative aspects of life” goes on overdrive. The urge to repair turns into an inclination to despair.

Enter Thanksgiving.

Divided or not, broken or not, once a year America forces us to grapple with gratitude. This is our national “deep breath.” Of course, when the nation is in such bad shape, it can feel awkward to imbue ourselves with gratitude.

The easy thing to do is ignore the darkness and count our blessings, at least for this one day. Many of us like to go around the Thanksgiving table and share the many things we are thankful for — and God knows there are plenty. You can never go wrong doing that.

But this year, because things are in such turmoil, we thought we’d go deeper.

So, we’ve come up with a Thanksgiving Haggadah, put together by Rabbi Zoë Klein Miles working with our community and religion editor Tom Fields-Meyer.

The idea was to borrow from the Passover seder and offer four questions around the theme of gratitude. These are not easy questions. They’re meant to provoke thought and meaningful conversation. In combination with blessings and commentaries, we hope this little discussion guide will elevate your Thanksgiving experience.

One thing I’ve learned in working on this issue is that gratitude is not as simple as it seems. On the surface, it’s such an obviously good idea. Looking at the glass as half full, taking nothing for granted, counting our blessings — all of those clichés are meaningful and true.

All too often, though, life gets in the way. How do we focus on gratitude while also focusing on our mistakes? How do we feel grateful while also feeling outrage at the world’s indignities?

Balancing polarities always has been the great Jewish dance. We don’t pick one imperative over another. We don’t wallow only in gratitude or only in fixing our lives. We don’t look only at the full part of the glass or at the empty part. We look at the whole glass at all times. The full part gives us hope; the empty part gives us the drive to go forward.

Maybe, in the end, the deepest expression of gratitude is to be thankful for the very fact that we are able to move forward, that we have the opportunity to make everything around us just a little bit better.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Move over Thanksgiving: Friendsgiving Shabbat is my reason for the season

The table is set. There’s wine, candles, bread, and a feast larger than your dining room table. It’s a time to come together with the people you care about and give thanks for everything good in your life. And, thankfully, I’m not talking about Thanksgiving, I mean Friendsgiving Shabbat dinner.

Friendsgiving is just what it sounds like: giving thanks over a meal shared with your friends. Over the last few years it’s become ever more popular, even Taco Bell did an ad campaign about it. Many people choose to replace the whole Thanksgiving feast, complete with family tension and bland family recipes, with a day of just the people they actually want to be around. As the perfect opportunity to test out new recipes and brush off the dust on old family classics, I look forward to gathering my friends for the potluck extravaganza that is Friendsgiving on Friday.

Friendsgiving is great, and combining it with Shabbat dinner takes it next level. Shabbat dinner, my favorite weekly holiday, sets the same intention that we seek out once a year in November. What brings joy into our lives? What are we grateful for and who do we want to share it with at the dinner table? I’ve been hosting through OneTable for the past year, ever since it launched in my city. OneTable is a nonprofit that is basically my support system for all things Shabbat dinner. I use their website to organize my meals, find new rituals, recipes and conversation starters, and they even offer grants to make it easy to host regularly. I’ve made new friends, recruited new hosts, and eaten more than my weight in challah!

Apparently, others had the same idea. My OneTable Hub Manager Marina Rostein told me that there have been over 100 Friendsgiving Shabbat dinners on the OneTable site this year.

While Thanksgiving is loaded with traditions and the people you’ve known forever, Friendsgiving just fits better for many millennials. I know plenty of people who struggle to see returning home as positive, but are excited to invent new traditions with their chosen families. Sometimes it’s because traveling is too expensive or difficult, and sometimes it’s just easier to be with the people who share your current values. My friends who are vegetarians have a hard time at their family’s meat-heavy holidays, but organize veggie-friendly Friendsgivings so they too can enjoy a fall feast. We’re a generation that knows what it wants, and how to get it.

While my family has eaten the same stuffing for 20 years, I love that Friendsgiving gives me the occasion to share something that is well-loved to my friends for the first time – and vice-versa for them and their family traditions. We get to share not only food, but memories with one another while creating new ones over a great meal.

Shabbat dinner shares that versatility. There is a traditional kind of Shabbat dinner: roasted chicken, too sweet wine, homemade challah. But that’s not the only option. Part of why I’ve been so invested in hosting through OneTable is that they know Shabbat dinner doesn’t have to look any one way. The rituals, new and old, traditional and chosen, can be meaningful no matter what’s served or where it’s eaten. They’ve made it possible to make Shabbat dinner my own.

One of my favorite dinners was actually one I hosted outside of my home at a bar. Called Board Game Bonanza, I reserved a table at a local bar that has hundreds of board games available to rent and allows you to bring in food. It was one of the easiest dinners I’ve ever held, yet also one of the most rewarding. People truly got a sense what Shabbat means to me – gathering friends around food for a meal that has meaning behind it. I opened up my table to people who also may be apprehensive about the “traditional” Shabbat ritual experience for a meaningful Friday night dinner, with a bit of competition!

This holiday season, I’m bringing these two traditions together and making something new that feels good to me and everyone at my table. Thanksgiving had its moment, but I’ll be celebrating Friendsgiving Shabbat dinner with OneTable. L’Chaim.

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Why I’m Not a Rabbi

I never thought I’d find myself in the position of deciding whether or not to be a rabbi. After all, I came from a secular family and from a young age I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a writer.

But after four years of studying creative writing in college and one summer working at a literary nonprofit in Manhattan, I found myself in a crisis that would eventually lead to the rabbi question.

I was 21 years old and writing was the center of my life, to the exclusion of almost anything else. A good writing day made me feel like a good person. A bad writing day made me feel like a worthless excuse for a human being. This, I began to sense, was a form of idolatry; writing could not be the most important thing in the world. Life had value apart from words on a page!

Meanwhile, I had begun to grow interested in my Jewish heritage. And I’d also begun to fall in love, inconveniently, with God.

So, at 21, I decided to stop writing entirely. Instead, I would build my life around something eternal.

I quit my job, left everything I knew and traveled to Jerusalem for the first time, with nothing but a backpack and my violin. There, I enrolled in a progressive, coed yeshiva called Pardes.

I ended up staying at Pardes for two years, studying Torah during the day and playing music in clubs or on the street at night. By the time I left, there was no question about what was at the center of my life as I prayed, studied Talmud and led Friday-night services.

When I returned to the States, I continued to play fiddle; I began to teach Torah; and slowly, very slowly, I also began to write. Like an athlete learning to hold her body correctly after a bad injury, I had to craft my sentences carefully, watching for signs of too much ego or ambition. But I was able to build a serious writing practice back into my life.

I continued to write, play music and teach Torah through my 20s, without feeling a need to choose between these sometimes disparate ways of life. But as my 30th birthday approached, I realized I was going to have to make some decisions.

What was I? An artist who loved Jewish texts and traditions or a rabbi who loved music and writing? I knew titles like “rabbi,” “musician” and “writer” were never fully accurate, that every human transcended a simple title. But I also understood that they mattered. I sensed that the path I chose would define the way I spent my days, how I paid my rent, and what was appropriate to say in public.

I found that when I leaned toward one possibility, the other self would materialize strongly. When I placed art out front, the Hebrew letters shone through, seeming to be the inner essence of that practice. But when I foregrounded the sacred books, I would feel the gentle curves of my violin’s body, notes inside my fingertips, poems burning on my tongue.

I agonized over this decision for months.

In the end, as silly as it sounds, it was cursing that finally led me to decide not to be a rabbi. I am not particularly foul-mouthed, but I wanted to be able to drop F-bombs with impunity, in my writing and in my life.

Really, looking back, I see that this was symbolic. I wanted to be able to say anything, from the esoteric to the vulgar, without the pressure of representing my people and my tradition.

So I finally recycled the rabbinical school application.

Thankfully, Judaism is not terribly hierarchical, at least in the communities in which I live and work. As a layperson, I can lead services, teach the traditions, counsel seekers, and officiate my students’ bar and bat mitzvahs.

Thank goodness for all the rabbis who bear the honor and the burden of communal representation. As for me, I’m just a wandering melamed, grateful for the tools I have to find as much holiness as I can in the world: Torah, music and writing down the meditations of my heart — from the sacred to the profane. n

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Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician and Torah teacher who lives in Portland, Ore.

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