Looking Back: Anti-Semitism In The 90s In Portland, Oregon

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

                Portland's Motto:  KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD

The 1990s (already 36 years ago)  were a decade that was virtually unprecedented in the history of the American radical right. Standoffs with law enforcement officials at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and near Waco, Texas, helped to ignite the modern militia movement, while the 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City showed the world just how deadly convinced antigovernment zealots could be.

Portland was weird in the 1990s because it was a cheap, gritty, working-class haven that attracted artists, slackers, and counterculture misfits who could easily live on very little money. It functioned as an eccentric refuge before corporate gentrification and tech booms reshaped the Pacific Northwest. 

During the 1990s, Portland, Oregon faced a serious wave of anti-Semitism driven by active white supremacist groups, underground neo-Nazi networks, and violent hate incidents. In the 1990s, the Black community in Portland faced severe systemic racism, displacement through gentrification, and fallout from violent white supremacist activity along with the Jews.

During the 1990s, Portland's Jewish population grew from an estimated 17,500 to roughly 25,000 residents. This growth was heavily shaped by a significant influx of Jewish emigrants leaving Soviet Russia. Russian-speaking and Soviet immigrants who came to Portland in the 1990s were not all Jewish; while about 1,000 Jewish individuals arrived during that wave, the vast majority were actually evangelical Christians, including Pentecostals and Baptists escaping religious restrictions.

In 1990, the Black population of Portland was 33,530, making up roughly 7.7% of the city's total population of 437,319.Housing and Lending Discrimination: Local banks heavily redlined Northeast Portland's historic Albina district, denying home loans to Black residents while investing in white neighborhoods.

White Supremacist Cells: The Pacific Northwest and Oregon region harbored underground extremist groups, such as the Knights of the New Order, which stockpiled stolen military weapons and explosives with explicit plans to attack Jewish-owned businesses, media outlets, and community centers. They had psalms and hymns that drew on Christian tradition but supplicated Christ to redeem the Aryan race and wipe out the lower races.

Their symbol was a yellow flag with a swastika and four fleurs-de-lys. The golden background symbolized eternity, the lilies racial purity, and the red swastika the rising Aryan hero

Skinhead Subculture: Following the violent 1988 murder of Mulugeta Seraw by racist skinheads in Portland, white nationalist and neo-Nazi organizing remained prominent through the early and mid-1990s, creating a tense environment for minority and Jewish residents. 
Clandestine Plots: Unlike the public street marches seen in prior decades, much of the 1990s far-right extremist activity in the region operated quietly beneath the surface, focusing on weapon stockpiling and targeted terror campaigns. 
Aryan Nations: A neo-Nazi and Christian Identity organization based in Idaho led by Richard Butler, which held annual World Congress gatherings before facing crippling civil lawsuits and decline at the end of the decade. 
National Alliance: A leading neo-Nazi organization led by William Luther Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries), which focused heavily on political propaganda and recruitment during this period.
Racist Skinhead Crews: Loose street-level networks like the Confederate Hammerskins that engaged in violent hate crimes and cross-over with white power music scenes. 
Militia and Patriot Movements: While distinct in official rhetoric, the anti-government militia movement of the 1990s—spurred by standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco—heavily overlapped with white supremacist and 


sovereign citizen ideologies.

Portland in the 1990s was a gritty, highly affordable, and distinctively counter-cultural working-class city. Defined by the grunge music boom, iconic underground venues like Satyricon, pioneering craft breweries, and an easygoing "retire at 25" ethos, it served as the raw, anti-establishment haven famously spoofed in Portlandia.  With Mudhoney, Nirvana, and Soundgarden at the helm, grunge music exploded in the early 90s – and the world didn’t know what hit it,

   Comedy series of Portlandia:  The satirical sketch comedy show, co-created and co-starred by Jewish musician and writer Carrie Brownstein, focused instead on mocking progressive and hipster culture in Portland, Oregon.

Community Response to Anti-Semitism

Civil Action: Local civil rights organizations, community watch groups, and anti-racist action networks heavily monitored and exposed regional neo-Nazi activities to counter the rising tide of bigotry.
Local Vigilance: The regional Jewish community and allies increased security awareness and cooperative defense strategies alongside local watchdogs to counter the persistent threat of far-right violence in Oregon..

Looking Back, Anti-Semitism's Beginnings in 1910's in Portland, Oregon

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        

Between 1880 and 1924, the mass migration of roughly 2.5 million East Europeans to the United States dramatically altered the American Jewish landscape. Compared to Germans who had arrived earlier, Eastern Europeans tended to be far more traditional in their religious practices. They were predominantly craft or industrial workers (particularly garment workers) and more receptive to socialist and Zionist ideologies than were their American coreligionists.

Around 1910, Jewish immigrants in Portland, Oregon centered their lives in the South Portland neighborhood, established a vibrant community with local institutions, and bridged differences between older German settlers and newer Eastern European arrivals.  During the 1910s, Portland's Jewish population was roughly estimated at around 2,300 to several thousand people, as the local community grew rapidly due to new Eastern European immigration.                                  

                       Hattie "Zlata" Goldfoot nee Jermulowske

  The Immigrant Hub: South Portland (just south of downtown) became a dense, walkable neighborhood where families lived close to synagogues, kosher markets, and bakeries.  During the 1910s, Portland's growing Jewish community was served by several active congregations, including Congregation Beth Israel, Congregation Shaarie Torah, and early gatherings of Congregation Ahavath Achim,  Because the region's main racial prejudices at the time targeted Asian and Indigenous populations, European Jewish immigrants were generally accepted into white civic, business, and political circles.  Exclusion was going on, though, socially.  

In the 1910s, Jewish people in Portland faced minimal systemic employment discrimination in daily commerce, working mostly as independent merchants, peddlers, and storekeepers or within family networks, though they experienced social exclusion in elite local clubs.

Congregation Beth Israel: Established in 1858, it was Portland's oldest congregation. During the 1910s, the members worshipped at their prominent building located at Southwest Tenth and Main Streets until a fire destroyed it in the 1920s.

Congregation Shaarie Torah: Founded in 1905 by Russian Jewish immigrants, the Orthodox congregation was active during the 1910s in a refurbished building originally moved to First Avenue, south of Hall Street. 

Congregation Ahavath Achim: Formed around 1910 by Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Turkey and Rhodes, they began regular prayer services and formally organized their community before officially incorporating in 1916. 

Congregation Kesser Israel: Founded in 1912 by Eastern European immigrants as an Orthodox shul in the South Portland neighborhood. This is where my paternal grandparents attended, and then my grandfather died in his horse and wagon accident in 1912. My bubba attended alone, then.  

 Neveh Zedek Talmud Torah: An Orthodox congregation formed from earlier mergers that served the local community on the-then South Portland-centered Jewish district before eventually evolving into later Conservative affiliations decades later.

 Ahavai Sholom: Founded in 1869, this congregation operated out of their building built in 1904 at Southwest Park Avenue and Clay Street during the 1910s.

 Linath Hazedek: Formed as an Orthodox congregation in 1914.

My father and his siblings were born 1906, 1908, 1910, 1911 and 1912;   his birthday being in 1908. His Jewish parents were from different parts of Lithuania.   He attended: Failing Grade School. He grew up speaking Yiddish only;  his mother spoke only Yiddish.  How did the 1st grade teacherhandle such a classroom, most likely with many like my father, and  my experience as teaching for 25 years includesteaching ESL to adults.  I am just amazed at what thesechildren had to adjust their brains to.  My father remembered that there was one black boy in his class. At age 4 my dad and his 6 year old brother were out selling newspapers, making change and learning about life. I imagine he was a quick learner in math.   

 Mel Blanc, also bornin 1908,  was in his class in high school.  Mel  was Melvin Jerome Blanc, though born in California,  nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Voices”, was an American voice actor and comedian Blanc is best known for voicing iconic Warner Bros. characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester, and Yosemite Sam. 

Failing was named for Josiah Failing (July 9, 1806 – August 14, 1877)who was a businessman and the fourth mayor of Portland, Oregon, United States. Born in New York, he moved to Portland when it was still a small town of a few hundred. He and his son Henry, who also became a noted businessman and mayor of the city, started a general merchandising business that became very  successful.Josiah moved out here in 1851, was one of the first to live in Portland.  He located his store diagonally across the street from the business of Henry W. Corbett, a future U.S. Senator with whom the Failing business would later partner.

      School of Medicine History

The OHSU School of Medicine has roots dating back to the late 19th century and is one of the oldest western medical schools. In 2012, the OHSU School of Medicine celebrated the 125th anniversary of its founding., so it had been established in 1887, and was here already.  Local Practices: Surviving regional and institutional records from the Oregon Health & Science University Historical Collections & Archives do not indicate that a formalized religious quota system was active at the Portland-based medical school during the specific 1910–1920 timeframe. such as existed on the East Coast.  

Between 1900 and 1913, the Chinese were submerged in a new multiracial migration spilling over their district. As elderly Chinese men returned to their home villages, and the Chinese population declined, Japanese and Italian laborers, black railroad porters, and others moved in to reinforce the area’s image as a place of temporary residence. Japanese men came quite suddenly after 1897 in clusters of ten to twenty from a few farming villages looking for work on railroad crews or as laborers. By 1900, almost 1,200 Japanese men, many married with their wives back home, resided in rooming houses near First and Couch streets and along Flanders Street. Japanese men formed loose partnerships to open rooming houses, pool halls, barber shops, and restaurants. To staff this network of small businesses they traveled back and forth to Japan, bringing brothers and cousins to Portland as cooks, waiters, and laborers. A much smaller number went to east Portland to work on section crews for the interurban trolleys or as farm laborers hoping to save enough to lease their own land. Japanese men were involved in their own seasonal workers’ frontier, with temporary railroad jobs all the way to Nampa, Idaho.

 By 1910, Portland’s city government, under pressure from women’s clubs and ministers, forced the removal of prostitutes. A letter to Mayor Joseph Simon in 1909 refers to Fourth Street as the former site of brothels, “90 percent of [whose] inhabitants are foreign born women procured and doomed to the life.” No Japanese women in Portland in 1920, when virtually all were married and assisting their husbands on rented farmland or in small businesses, had been in the city in 1900.  Japanese immigrants settled mainly in northwest Portland, in an area now referred to as Old Town-Chinatown, between the Willamette River and Broadway. By the early twentieth century, Japantown, or Nihonmachi, was home to Japanese-operated businesses, including hotels and boarding houses, restaurants, laundries and baths, groceries, doctors, and dentists. Japantown became vacant following the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II.

SW Portland Community Support: The Neighborhood House, opened in 1905 by the National Council of Jewish Women, offered English lessons, health clinics, and childcare for arriving families.  Wealthy, established German-Jewish pioneers—such as civic leader Ben Selling—helped raise large sums of money to support and house the destitute newer arrivals from Eastern Europe

New Traditions: Around 1910, Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Turkey and Rhodes began meeting in the city, later forming Oregon's first Sephardic congregation, Ahavath Achim.

African Americans lived in Portland, Oregon, during the 1910s, numbering around 1,045 residents by 1910. Many worked in railroad jobs near Union Station, formed local institutions like Portland's first NAACP chapter in 1914, and established community life centered near the inner-city and early Albina districts.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc

https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/portland-jews

https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/commerce-climate-and-community-a-history-of-portland-and-its-people/the-mature-distribution-center/ethnic-diversity-in-the-city/