Hey George.
I'm obviously selling a book on Portlet development, so my post is definitely biased. However, I do have a website that provides a number of free video tutorials on creating portlets,including the JSF portlet. The site is quite popular, so
you should check it out, and tell all your friends.
Blatenty Self-Promotion: My Portlet Development Site The site uses IRAD to develop all of the portlets, so it's excellent for a WebSphere developer.
In my examples, I use the Apache bridge for JetSpeed. The Portlet is the same for WebSphere, but different.

Obviously, there is an IBM specific bridge that must be configured in the web.xml file and portlet.xml file. However, the JSF portlet wizard in Rational Application Developer should take care of that little detail for you.
Best of luck! And post back if you have more questions.
-Cameron McKenzie