Though she’s a lifelong Seattleite, Karen Treiger’s family lineage has roots in some of the early days of Portland’s Jewish community. She’s coming to Portland to talk about them and more.

Treiger’s latest book, “Standing on the Crack: The Legacy of Five Jewish Families from Seattle’s Vibrant Gilded Age,” is the subject of two events she’s hosting here in Portland. The first is this evening, Oct. 22, at the Eastside Jewish Commons at 7 pm. On Sunday, Nov. 2, 4 pm, she’ll be at Cedarwood Waldorf School in Southwest Portland – the building which was originally the Neighborhood House established by the Portland chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.

Like so many of Portland’s Jews in the early 20th century, Neighborhood House was a significant part of the lives of Treiger’s paternal grandfather’s family – Treiger’s great-uncle was principal of Neighborhood House’s Hebrew school for 15 years.

“The roots run deep there,” she said, “so I’m really excited to come and do an event there.”

A lawyer by training, Treiger left her legal practice to take on her first book, “My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story,” which details the survival of both of her husband’s parents during the Holocaust. The product of three years of research, it was released in 2018 and won a Nancy Pearl Book Award for Best Memoir and a Bronze Medal in World History at the Independent Book Publishers Awards in 2019. Treiger was still doing promotional appearances for the book in 2020 when the COVID pandemic hit. The time at home the pandemic created, coupled with the death of her father, impelled her to turn her research to her own family.

“He had hoped in his retirement to write the family history, and he died before he had the chance,” Treiger said. “He had saved these old, wonderful files filled with articles and pictures and things for me to start with, so I just decided to crack those open and see where it took me.”

From religiously observant families to more Reform-oriented men and women, the backgrounds of Treiger’s ancestors are so varied and diverse that it’s difficult to draw common threads between their experiences, except for, shockingly to Treiger, the lack of discrimination they faced when they came to the Northwest, particularly Portland, in the tail end of the 19th century. That bigotry, of course, came later in the form of quotas, exclusionary clubs and the Ku Klux Klan.

“I’m surprised, I have to admit, that that’s a consensus,” she said of the absence of discrimination against Jews in 19th century Portland. “The white settlers that were there were much more worried about the Japanese and Chinese that were  coming in.”

The stories in the book, as varied as they are, all come to a common focal point – the author.

“They all intersect at me,” she said. “These are the five families that made Karen Treiger.”

“Standing on the Crack: The Legacy of Five Jewish Families from Seattle’s Vibrant Gilded Age” is published by Coffeetown Press and is in stock at Powell’s Books and other retailers. “My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story,” published by Stare Lipki Press, is available on Amazon and other retailers. Registration for today’s event at EJC is free and available online at events.humanitix.com/ejc-author-reading-karen-treiger. No registration is required for Treiger’s Nov. 2 event at Cedarwood Waldorf School, and the event is free. More information about both events, as well as copies of both of Treiger’s books are also available at karentreiger.com.