[I]t’s 1988 and you’ve moved to Roseburg. That’s when Los Angeles residents Rhoda Mozorosky and her husband, Allen, retired and decided they wanted to live in the country. They discovered Roseburg while on a road trip and fell in love with the beautiful, relatively rural area, bought a house with a lot and a view, and settled in. The snag? Zero congregations.
“There were only a few Jewish people here,” Rhoda, now 83, remembers. “Rose and Sandy Maple and Jo Anne and Mark Berenbach occasionally invited their Jewish friends over for a potluck, but that was it.”
When there was a meeting in Eugene for people who wanted to foster Jewish communities in small towns, Rhoda and a friend went. The rest is history – history suitable for the Roseburg Jewish Museum … if there were one.
First, they put up flyers inviting people to help form a Jewish community, and they got some responses, including, Rhoda remembers, Frances and Charlie Sachs, Isabelle and Ron Lewis, and Lee and Vicky Carrol. They named themselves the Umpqua Valley Havurah, which means extended family. They named a board of directors with a president and officers. They wrote bylaws. They had real board meetings.
All this with only about half a dozen couples.
What they had in mind was more of a social group or book club, but it evolved quickly to include monthly Shabbat services. When some couples with young children moved in, the board decided to create a religious school, which puttered along for a short time. The second school attempt, though, was more successful. It had 12 children at one point and, Rhoda says, most of them became b’nai mitzvah thanks to Margo Traines, who had several years of rabbinical training and conducted services, taught school and tutored the Hebrew students.
“More and more families came,” says Rhoda. “They wanted to meet Jewish people, and now there actually was a Jewish group to connect with.” Havurah hired Alixe Dancer to teach, and Alixe brought in additional instructors.
Eventually, in the late 1990s, most of the students graduated and, with only a handful of small children left, Havurah closed its religious school. The structure the founding couples established, the adventurous trial-and-error evolution of the organization, and the constant influx of new people and new ideas, though, has resulted in a vibrant umbrella under which a variety of social, cultural and religious activity thrives.
Havurah today meets in members’ homes for the most part, although High Holiday services and some events open to the public are held in the library or in churches. They celebrate all the major holidays, but they have potlucks just for the fun of it as well. When a service is called for and no visiting rabbi is available, a member steps up to the plate. They hold auctions and other fundraisers, some to support Havurah and some for community causes.
[We wish mazel tov to Rhoda for her article and for all she has done for the Umpqua Valley Havurah.]
Notable Jews in Roseburg
Aaron Rose
Was Aaron Rose, the founder of Roseburg, Jewish? According to the following resource, yes. There are other resources, formerly claiming he was Jewish, that no longer do so.
Solomon Abraham
In 1860, Solomon Abraham and his brother, Hyman, purchased land from Aaron Rose. In 1866, they sold the land to John Creed Floed. The land included a partially completed house that later became the Floed-Lane House, which now is headquarters of the Douglas County Historical Society. While living in Roseburg, Solomon was “an honored member of the Masonic order and of the Odd Fellows.” He is buried in the Roseburg Memorial Gardens.
Solomon and his family also were pioneer land owners in the Pleasant Valley Prairie from the 1860’s to 1890’s.
In the 1880’s, Solomon built a lumber mill (in what later would become Glendale), which “produced timber for the completion of the Oregon and California Railroad between Roseburg, Oregon, and Redding, California.” He was instrumental in the founding of Glendale, originally wanting it named Julia, after his wife, Julia Hinkle Abraham. She is buried in the Roseburg Memorial Gardens.
On September 12, 2018, a dedication ceremony was held in Glendale, Oregon for a memorial marker to remember Solomon Abraham’s role in the town’s history. The marker was donated by Jerry Klinger, through his Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. Attending the ceremony was Pam Thurman, great-great-grandaughter of Solomon and Julia Abraham.
Glendale 6th grade class and other visitors
Article by Phillip Bean
Notable Jews of Roseburg and Douglas County with Pictures (opens in new tab)
Correction to Article by Phillip Bean
I was doing some research on your website, and I happened to notice my grandparents are mentioned in your history section. The only thing is that has their last name is misspelled. It says ” Rose and Sandy Maple”, when it should be Rose and Sandy Mabel. If that could be corrected, that would be great. Thank you, Ada Rauber