Moshe Lenske Memorial

 I, for one, am shocked that this has not taking place six months from now, when most would have hit the centennial.. Some of you were aware of his father, Reuben. They never stopped. Modestly controversial in his own way.  Outspoken, but part of a tradition that we cherish here in Southeast Portland. I knew him over the years, primarily through Democratic activities. Moshe, somebody mentioned, who was it was John, talked about following the rules.  He was a stickler for process. I'm trying to think of how much my life was consumed by meetings that Mosh chaired with the Democratic, Central Committee. Points of order for the Democratic Party, or just for the good of the order. Helping people understand how it should be. Who knew he was a philosophy major? I could believe it.  I could believe it. I have had a lot of experience with Mosh over a half a century.  But I was looking forward to the opportunity to participate here. Not that I'm going to add that much to ...

Good afternoon everyone. I'm Diane Rosenbaum and very honored to be able to join you today and to say a few words about a remarkable person.    It’s been really a treat already for me to hear so many of these stories because you think you know somebody, but you really don't because there's so many aspects of this long, long life that I had no idea about.  And so it's just a delight to hear them and to be able to add a few memories of my own. I knew Moshe mostly through the political world that’s been talked about a little, but I was talking to some of the folks here today who have known him in various aspects, and we were saying, you came to an event and it really wasn't an event until Moshe and Hilda showed up there. And you would  look around the room and see, were they there?  When they were there, then you knew it was really, really going to happen.  And not somebody who just showed up over and over, Mosh did not just show up, but he brought his wh...

I am Kathy Saitas. For the past 18 years, it has been my great good fortune to work in Reed’s advancement office as a charitable gift planner. It has been a complete pleasure--and honor--to have known so many alumni… going all the way back to the early 1930s and in every decade in between. When I started at Reed, a friend and former staff member just laughed at me: Working at Reed is not a job, she said, it is a full body contact sport. She was right --- I can say from experience that Reedies are certainly passionate, incredibly smart …. and just so much fun. And Moshe, as you heard from others, occupies a singular place in the Reed pantheon. But, I first met Moshe when I was working as a young lawyer downtown. Moshe confused me with my colleague Laura, and softly yoo-hooed in my direction-- Laaa-uuu--rrra, he--llo. I knew who he was, even if he didn't know me. I walked up and introduced myself. Hi Mr. Lenske, I am Kathy Saitas. I think you might have thought I was Laura Liebman. M...

 Good afternoon.  I met Moshe Lenske in 2006, when we served together on Reed's Alumni Board. I quickly learned that this vibrant, humorous, friendly guy was all by himself as much a Reed tradition as the Doyle Owl. Both started life in Eastmoreland and both were seemingly omnipresent at major Reed events. Moshe was on the board ex officio because he chaired the Foster-Scholz Club--whose membership is all alumni 40 or more years after their class year. He and his classmates from 1950 were so much the heart and soul of the club that it seemed to me that they had been there forever, but I learned that Moshe had been chair for only a few years and had other interests to pursue. In 2008, he recruited my wife, Kathia Emery, to join the Steering Committee and then at the first meeting she attended and with no warning, nominated her to replace himself as chair. I, of course, believe he made a brilliant choice, but I'll confess that I wondered how he came to know about her organizatio...

 I first met Moshe as a Reed freshman in the fall of 1968, when I was working in the unsuccessful campaign to re-elect Senator Wayne Morse.  Moshe and his wife Hilda were active in the progressive wing of the Democratic party – and in later years he treasured his relationship with the Morse archive and Morse Park in Eugene.   The two of them made contact with many Reed students, giving them a home away from home, and bringing them into their circle.  So I recall spending time at parties with Reed faculty with whom Moshe and Hilda were close, including physics professor Jean DeLord and his wife Natalie, and econ professor Carl Stevens. It was Moshe who first introduced me to the concept of the Freedom Seder.  This was just after two DC radicals had crafted a new seder with political content in the aftermath of the King assassination; Moshe and Hilda used the paperback version of that Hagadah in 1969.  As a teenager, I was somewhat resentful of the obligation...

 Moshe’s involvement with the Reed community began as a child growing up in Eastmoreland. Many of the college’s founding faculty lived in the neighborhood, and Moshe not only spent time at their homes playing with their children, he also witnessed them in their element at the soirées Moshe’s parents held at their house. As his parents were also connected to progressive circles across the country, Moshe was exposed to all manners of political and social activists who passed through Portland. Unlike the Ivies and many other liberal arts colleges at the time, Reed did not impose quotas on the number of Jewish students it admitted. That drew students from around the country, especially the east coast, enriching what was otherwise largely a regional student body. At the Lenske family home, Jewish students found a welcoming reception for Sabbath and Jewish holidays, a tradition that Moshe and his wife Hilda later continued.   Moshe grew up attending lectures and events on the Reed c...

Mark Loring, Moshe's cousin, spoke for himself and read a note from Moshe's sister Judy: I hadn't really expected to read today, but as I am apparently the ragged remnant of a once mighty tribe.  I will try to represent for my family. Moshe's mother, my aunt Rose, basically raised my dad, the first one of our family to be born in this country.  In my family, of course, Moshe and Judy and Aryeh were ahead of us here. So although Moshe was of my generation, he was ahead of me breaking trail by some distance, and all three of them were incredibly influential and important. In my young 20s, when I was wandering around trying to find someplace to be, someone to be, and I found myself here in Portland and spending a lot of time at Reed College, as many of us did, who had active and inquiring minds but no academic background. And this was a really terrific place for someone like me.  I didn't know what movies were until I sat in these hard benches and saw them here.  And t...

•    Welcome and thank you for coming to honor Reed alumnus, Moshe Doav Lenske, Reed class of 1950. •    Moshe was a dyed-in-the-wool Reedie. He spent nearly all of his life within a stone's throw of the college. •    He grew up in Eastmoreland in a home where Reed faculty and students from the college's early days -- 1930s and 40s -- gathered for weekly dinners  -- so not surprising that he matriculated at the college in 1942. •    His Reed years were interrupted by his military service in Europe during WWII, but he returned to Reed, studying with legendary professors, Arragon, Knowlton, Griffith, Sisson, Reynolds, Botsford, Chittick -- the same folks who used to gather at his parents’ home when he was a boy. •    After Reed, Moshe dedicated much of his life in unparalleled service to the college. To name just a few of his alumni roles: •    Moshe served as an alumni trustee at Reed from 1992...