Our Leadership team
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Eleyna Fugman (she/her)
is a consummate Jewish community builder, living on Chinook land in Portland, OR.
Her work revolves around building and nurturing Jewish communities that are led and centered by Jews from populations that have been historically marginalized; women, queer and trans Jews, Jews of color and Jews not raised in Jewish communities. In 2017, Fugman co-founded the alternative grassroots Jewish community The Alberta Shul and in 2018 went on to co-found the leadership development organization TischPDX, whose mission is to “Bolster the Leadership of Young and Marginalized Jews in Portland, OR.”
Born and raised outside of Jewish community in rural northern California, Eleyna’s dedication to this work is based on her own experiences of seeking to find Jewish community in her 20’s as a young queer Jewish woman. She was eventually welcomed into Jewish community in the early 1990’s by other young adult and queer lay-led Shabbat minyanim in San Francisco.
After that, it took more than 15 years until she could see herself as a leader in the Jewish community. Since then, she has been working to support other young lay leaders, volunteers and service leaders who create alternative Jewish portals for their peers to enter into Jewish community.
Eleyna is also the co-founder of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice) PDX and has served on the boards of OPAL Environmental Justice, The Institute for Judaic Studies and The Alberta Shul.
She has a BA from Brown University and has completed two years of Jewish Studies coursework and pre-rabbinic education at Portland State University, Aleph, Hadar, Drisha, Jewish Theological Seminary and Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
She loves hosting Shabbat meals, singing Jewish music and mushroom hunting in Oregon’s temperate rainforests.
Our Board
Devra Polack (she/they)
Board Chair
Devra is an aging queer Jewish femme who has lived and worked in North Portland since 2007. For an introvert, she loves a klatch and feels passionate about connecting with people across multiple communities.
For over 20 years, she has run a small tech consulting and development agency, Spinster Design, where she has also provided mentorship and pro bono services to several small businesses and organizations. During her six years on the Board of Directors of NOLOSE, a queer, intersectional radical fat activist network, she helped found their “Small Projects Across the Land” program to provide seed funding for regional programming. She currently serves as a moderator for the growing PDX Queer Jews Facebook community of 700+ local members.
Devra enjoys her time away from screens growing and sharing food, herding chickens and cats, chasing a ball or reveling in nature, and doing ridiculous things for a laugh. She is ever learning from the growing body of work of the disability justice community, which is forging collaborative mutual aid networks and modeling new and creative pathways with other activist communities.
Blair Denniberg (she/her)
Former Board Chair
Blair Denniberg (she/her) is an alumnus of TischPDX’s second cohort. She first joined the TischPDX board as secretary in 2021 and now serves as board co-chair. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies from the University of South Florida and a Master of Nonprofit Management degree from Florida Atlantic University. Blair started her career as an executive administrator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) where she found a strong sense of purpose by supporting science education, equality, and anti-racism. She currently serves as the executive assistant to the CEO at Cascadia Health, one of the Pacific Northwest’s largest community based mental health organizations. Outside of work, Blair is passionate about bringing Portland’s queer Jewish together through Shabbat dinners and queer mikvah gatherings. She is a member of Congregation Shir Tikvah and also serves as a volunteer contemporary mikvah guide at our local community mikvah, Rachel’s Well. In addition to her work in the queer Jewish community, Blair also serves as a member of the Five Oaks Museum Board. She lives in Southeast Portland with her wife Rebecca, and cats, Shmuly and Konami.
Dorit Price-Levine (she/her)
Board Member
Dorit Price-Levine is a professional facilitator, mediator, and licensed attorney. Incorporating her expertise in Transformative Mediation and Non-Violent Communication, Dorit has led dialogue across conflict workshops for a decade and a half at over a hundred institutions. These include universities, non-profit and for-profit workplaces, houses of worship, and local government.
Dorit supports groups to skillfully engage across differences, convenes public meetings that shape state and federal policy, and designs and facilitates multi-stakeholder decision-making processes.
Formerly a Senior Associate at the Consensus Building Institute and Deputy Director of Resetting the Table, Dorit also spent years living in Israel and Palestine working in peacebuilding and human rights. She has lived elsewhere in the Middle East, including Egypt and Lebanon. Dorit has working knowledge of Hebrew, Spanish, and Arabic. She holds a JD from the UC Berkeley School of Law and a B.A. in Political Science and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Rosanne Marmor (she/her)
Board Member
Rosanne Marmor is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and lives in NE Portland with her wife and daughter and their brood of cats and dogs. Rosanne has worked for non-profits in New York City, California and Oregon. Her non-profit work has centered on services for people with no and low incomes living in affordable and public housing. She is now the CEO and Founder of Pulse Wellness Cooperative.
Rosanne Marmor grew up in New York City with a very low income. Her parents were both disabled and it was often hard for them to make ends meet. She grew up believing that service to the community was an important part of easing the burdens of poverty and dedicated her time towards poverty alleviation programs. She also knew she was a lesbian, but this was a secret kept from family until much later. She settled in Portland in 1993 and began volunteering for Transition Projects until she got in to Portland State University and received her Master’s in Social Work.
Mariah Berlanga-Shevchuk (she/her)
Board Member
Mariah is a museum professional and educator currently based in Portland, Oregon. She is the Head of Public Engagement at the Oregon Jewish Museum & Center for Holocaust Education, where she oversees community partnerships, outreach initiatives, and public programming. Originally from Arizona, she was previously the Director of Exhibitions and Cultural Resources at Five Oaks Museum in Washington County, Oregon and Associate Curator at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles. As a public historian, Mariah seeks to make museums and cultural centers sites of social action through responsive, accessible programs and exhibitions that inspire connection and curiosity.
Our Founders
Rabbi Ariel Stone (she/they)
Co-Founder and former Board Member
Rabbi Ariel Stone was the spiritual leader of Congregation Shir Tikvah for almost two decades. A caring and vibrant leader, she is an exceptionally knowledgeable teacher of Torah and a recognized scholar of Jewish mysticism. A native of Orlando Florida, Rabbi Stone studied at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and New York (1986-1991). While there she was a CLAL Rabbinical Fellow, taught first year Hebrew, and helped to establish the HUC-JIR student-run soup kitchen. After two years at Temple Beth Israel in Miami Florida, in 1993 she accepted the invitation of the World Union for Progressive Judaism to teach and organize in Ukraine. She guided Congregation HaTikvah of Kiev and assisted in the establishment of progressive congregations throughout Ukraine that continue to flourish today. Between 1996-2001, she was associate rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Portland. In 2001 she was awarded a two-year fellowship at the Mandel School for Educational and Social Leadership.
From 2003 to the 2025, she served as the independent Portland east side Congregation Shir Tikvah’s Rabbi. She found the Reform movement to no longer be a good fit, and considers herself post-denominational. In 2010, she completed her doctorate at the (non-denominational) Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies under the direction of Dr. Byron Sherwin. Rabbi Stone served as Oregon Board of Rabbi’s President from 2007-2009 and 2015-2017. In that capacity she co-founded Oregon’s Jewish indigent burial society Hesed Shel Emet, contributed to the recreation of the Portland Jewish Free Loan, helped to lead the creation of Portland’s new community mikveh Rachel’s Well, and led in the creation and filling of a new position of Portland Jewish Community Chaplain. In 2017 she became the convener of the Portland Interfaith Clergy Resistance, which focuses upon supporting efforts for police reform in the city of Portland and seeks to bear moral witness in the streets during protests. In 2018 she led the creation of an innovative outreach to unaffiliated Jews called TischPDX. She has served as adjunct faculty at Portland State University and Willamette University of Salem, Oregon. In 2018 she was honored to be the recipient of the City of Portland Human Rights Commission’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Rabbi Stone is the author of many rituals and articles. Her book Because All is One is an invitation to modern Jews to discover the relevance of mysticism and traditional Jewish community. Alef-Bet of Death: Dying As A Jew is a spiritual guide to those facing death.
our fiscal sponsor
Beloved Builders
TischPDX’s fiscal sponsor is Beloved Builders. Beloved supports and nourishes spiritual leaders who are creating new spaces of sacred belonging