Looking Back: Anti-Semitism In The 50's in Portland, Oregon

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                                   A Reed College Student's car in 1950's 

In 1950s Portland, anti-Semitism was largely defined by social, professional, and institutional exclusion rather than overt violence. While the community was becoming more established, Jewish Portlanders routinely faced discrimination in employment, housing, and social clubs, reflecting a localized version of national prejudices during that era.  However, we had it better than the East Coast, or the Black Community here.  

I graduated Washington High in 1951, a year ahead of my peers.  It was the time I experienced some anti-Semitism. When sitting in the cafeteria with others where there was a seat, I heard them talking and saying how awful Jews were.  Being a kid, I finally said during a lull in their conversation, "I'm Jewish."  I was looking at the expression on their faces, and they were embarrassed, I think.  That stopped that topic!  

In high school, one waited to be asked to join a sorority.  There were the exclusive ones with all the popular girls, and then there were the lowly ones.  We Jewish girls had learned to have our own sorority made up of Jewish girls from all the high schools.  

First I belonged to the Bnai Brith and joined the BB Girls.  Then I joined QED (Queen Ester's Daughters)  The 3rd one was Sub Deb.  That kept me busy attended meetings and events such as fantastic formal dances calling for evening gowns, and dates and corsages.  Somewhere in between I attended classes at school, and dated Darrell Felici, an Italian big guy and went to a few football games. He was on  the school patrol and warned us when our Shack was being invaded .  I walked to school from Ladds Addition and back, so met up with Pat Diel who lived further on;  and then Dick Bogle, high school sports editor who was 4 years older than me and we walked together and talked;  him about his experiences being kept out of events because he was Black,  and  few of mine.  We managed to remain friends till he passed away.

                                        1951  as Queen Esther

My big event was while dating Sammie Arnstein, I became Queen Esther of that year's Purim Ball in Portland.  That honor was exciting for me, but even more meaningful as I got older, and I thank Sammie in my prayers for making it happen somehow;  oh yes, buying tickets.  It told me who I was many  a time and I am who I am because of that one thing, I think.    Life was okay.  Okay because I worked for my father when 16 and could drive the car he provided.

In the 1950s, Reed College acted as an intellectual haven for Jewish students from the East Coast and California. Many were denied admission to Ivy League schools due to strict religious quotas. Drawn to Reed's coeducational, nonsectarian, and barrier-free environment, Jewish students found an egalitarian community focused heavily on rigorous academic inquiry.  I met one studying Pre-Med and we married.  By 1953 I had a son, Steve, and 1954 brought my daughter, Debbie.  I kept attending Lewis & Clark until 10 days before Steve was born.  My Reed College partner was not Jewish, and this turned out to be such a mixing time of people, and for me, didn't work out.  

My Dad was tough, as he had had a rough childhood, by firing me when I was pregnant.  Oy vey!  I thought I'd have to peddle cookies from door to door.   Job Market: Established non-Jewish law firms and major professional corporations frequently refused to hire Jewish applicants. This forced professionals to either open solo practices or join small, primarily Jewish partnerships (for example, future prominent attorney Morrie Galen opened his own solo practice in 1950 because he couldn't get hired by established firms).  

Little did I know what was happening to my father's South Portland beginnings.  The "South Portland" Transition: For the first half of the 20th century, the Jewish community was largely centralized in the tight-knit, working-class immigrant neighborhood of South Portland. In the 1950s, this area radically changed due to urban renewal projects that cleared residences, pushing Jewish families to relocate to more prosperous, established neighborhoods on the city's east side.  We were a family already there by 1936.  

Community Building: To combat exclusion from the broader secular community, Jewish Portlanders leaned heavily on their own civic organizations. The B'nai B'rith, the Jewish Community Center, and several synagogues became the primary social hubs. In 1959, the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland even established the Jewish Review to foster community communication. My neighbor, Ben Padrow, the brother of my playmate, Joan was the editor and also taught at Portland State U.  I had him as an instructor by taking his class.                                         

   The Palais Royale Ballroom: Once located at 2115 West Burnside, the ballroom had many different names before bought in 1944, including DeHoney’s Ballroom, the Uptown Ballroom and finally the Palais later. The ballroom was open six nights each night with a designated dance. Some of the types and styles included Old Timers which meant old structured dances such as Schottische, Varsovienne, Viennese Waltz, Polka, the Quick Step, and the Peabody.These were full houses of accomplished dancers who knew the intricate steps and patterns of these dances. Another designation was “modern,” which meant jitterbug, foxtrot, Balboa, swing, glides and waltzes.  Latin was also popular and included rhumba, Bolero, tango, samba, merengue, salsa, cha cha cha, Paso Doble, Mambo and Bossa Nova.Dancers included older and younger adults, married couples, singles, high school and college students, service men and women. Many couples would arrive separately and meet up to dance – it was usual for men and women to arrive alone.   Dancing in 1950s Portland was defined by swinging jazz clubs along N. Williams Ave, legendary downtown ballrooms, and local teen TV shows. It was a vibrant era where R&B, country, and early rock 'n' roll fueled everything from structured ballroom dancing to unstructured free-form styles.  We danced only one step, a square, as I remember at the Jantzen Beach Ballroom.  

Extremist Fringe Elements: While Oregon had a strong history of far-right and white supremacist movements—such as the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and pro-Nazi groups in the 1930s—the 1950s was a period where extreme, fringe anti-Semitism operated quietly beneath a veneer of polite exclusion. More militant anti-Semitic fringe groups (like the National Party) did not surface visibly in Portland until the mid-1960s.  

Dick was fantastic:  Dick Bogle was a multi-talented Oregonian and humanitarian who dedicated his adult life to service in the Portland area. The great-grandson of Northwest pioneers, Bogle was a modern pacesetter—one of the first Black police officers in Portland, the first Black television newscaster in the Northwest, and the second Black city commissioner of Portland.After college, Bogle worked as an insurance fraud investigator. In 1952, he published a jazz review and an endorsement of Adlai Stevenson for U.S. president in the Portland Challenger newspaper, which was founded by William A. Hilliard and targeted the black community.  His beautiful mother has been  writer on one of our newspapers, and we had an Oregonian and a Journal.  

Meanwhile during this period, Dick Bogle was experiencing more disappointments:  Public Accommodations: While Portland passed a unanimous ordinance in 1950 banning discrimination in public spaces, true social integration remained a battle. Black patrons were regularly barred from white restaurants and businesses, and many venues operated under covert "white trade only" policies. Activism and Advocacy: The Urban League of Portland and local NAACP branches led major pushbacks, eventually securing a statewide public accommodations law in 1953 that outlawed refusal of service based on race. So that's what he had to work against, a background of anti-Blacks.  

How About Middle East Peace by November 21, 2026?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

                  Location of Voyager's Scientific Instruments 

Prepare to expect some amazing prize in the future.  :How about peace in the Middle East by November 21, 2026.  I'm challenging the countries by setting this date.   One reason may come from Voyager I, and the other may come from President Hertzog of Israel who is a peacemaker.  Being these two are in our immediate future possibly at the same time, or not, makes me wonder if they are part of the same revelation.

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, on my 43rd birthday,  as part of the Voyager program, to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth.  It is a teeny thing with a little power source and has been buzzing along all these years making discoveries and sending back to the scientists.  

Out in the heliosphere they found not quiet and an easy ride but one very different than expected.  Our sun makes solar wind and we in the Milky Way are inside a solar wind bubble of protection, so now it was in the wild blue? yonder.  

Here are 4 pictures taken by NASA's Voyager from their 45 year mission

By 2012 it crossed this solar system and this interstellar space was nothing but stormy.  For 5 decades our Voyager I had beeped back to us but by 2023 the date came back all scrambled up.  The stormy space had corroded it.  

In 2024 it came back clear after scientists at their end did some tinkering.  By 2026 it was working with only 250 watts. A standard refrigerator light bulb typically uses between 25 and 40 watts for traditional incandescent bulbs. What the scientists are predicting is that something special is going to happen on November 21, 2026 when they cross the line again.  "Voyager 1 is also projected to reach a distance of one light day from Earth in November 2026."

Herzog says Israel-Saudi peace is his dream, 'unsurprised' by renewed Iran conflict, in interview:  

President Isaac Herzog discussed the unfolding situation with Iran and the prospect of normalization in the region in a Thursday interview with Saudi state-owned Al-Arabiya. Saudi Arabia has been one country that hasn't joined the group.

"It is my dream to see peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. I have great respect for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman,” said Herzog. “The thing that we want most in Israel is to see rapprochement between the nations.”

“The dialogue between Jerusalem and Mecca should be the real gist of it, because I believe Jew and Muslim need to dwell together in this region in peace. I guess I can't come to Riyadh just as an ordinary citizen, but I hope to be able to realize this dream and meet the Saudi Arabian leadership officially in due course.”

President Hertzog just let it be known that he is calling for normalization with all the Arab countries to work with Israel  on the Abrahamic Accords.  He feels this is the best of times to shift the world to see Jerusalem and Mecca as the children of Abraham that can work together for peace.  

And just who is this president to expect such a thing?  Isaac "Bougie" Herzog (Hebrew: יִצְחָק "בּוּזִ'י" הֶרְצוֹג, born 22 September 1960) is an Israeli politician who has been serving since 2021 as the president of Israel. He is the first president to have been born in Israel after its Declaration of Independence. Son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, he is a lawyer by profession and had served as Government Secretary from 1999 to 2001.Isaac (Yitzhak) "Bougie" Herzog was born in Tel Aviv. He is the son of Major-General Chaim Herzog, who served two terms as the sixth president of Israel from 1983 to 1993, and Aura Ambache, founder of the Council for a Beautiful Israel. Herzog's father was born and raised in Ireland and his mother was born in Egypt; their families were of Eastern European Jewish descent (from Poland, Russia, and Lithuania).

 His paternal grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the first chief rabbi of Ireland^] a post he held from 1922 to 1935, and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1936 to 1959. The third foreign minister of Israel, Abba Eban, was his Uncle.     My grandfather, Nathan Goldfoot seemed to follow him as he also lived

 in Ireland at the same time.  Today, Ireland is very anti-Israel, and anti-

Semitic.  

Resource:

TV on Youtube program

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-902806

Suez Canal's Sudden Importance To China, Iran, And Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Information coming to us is that Iran's present meshugana government be as it is, is looking into using the Suez Canal for shipping. They have competition going on already.  

Officially, Israeli-registered ships and vessels carrying cargo to or from Israeli ports are permitted to use the Suez Canal under the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

 However, in practice, Israeli-affiliated commercial shipping frequently faces severe logistical hurdles, delays, and security risks when navigating the region.

   Follow the red line: Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean 

In late June, shortly after the United States and Iran agreed on a ceasefire, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) announced an operation to move trapped ships and more than 11,000 seafarers out of the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic international waterway has been effectively closed by the Iranian regime since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February.President Trump's assertion last week, which he quickly backed away from, that the U.S. could control the Strait of Hormuz and collect tolls itself, likely did little to quell concerns about the independence of international waterways.

The canal was strategically important, as it provided the shortest ocean link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Historically, there is: The Blockade Era: From 1948 until the 1979 peace treaty, Egypt strictly prohibited all Israeli shipping and cargo bound for Israel from passing through the canal, a major source of tension that led to the Suez Crisis. 

The Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab–Israeli war, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 31 October, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had nationalised earlier in the year.

The Right of Passage: The 1979 peace treaty normalized relations and legally secured Israeli passage through the Suez Canal, formally opening the route to Israeli vessels. 

                                   CIA map 1996 SW Asia

Current Challenges: While the waterway remains vital for global trade, geopolitical tensions, fluctuating tolls, and recent Red Sea security crises make transit unpredictable. Consequently, Israel has explored alternatives like the proposed Ben Gurion Canal project to bypass Egyptian-controlled waters entirely.  The Ben Gurion Canal is a proposed $16 billion to $100 billion mega-project to carve a 160-mile waterway across the Negev Desert, connecting the Red Sea (Eilat) to the Mediterranean Sea. Conceived in the 1960s, it has resurfaced as a strategic alternative to the Suez Canal to bypass Houthi threats and challenge Egypt's regional trade monopoly. The project remains heavily conceptual, with no active construction or finalized official blueprints. Experts debate its feasibility, as the harsh desert terrain, logistical hurdles of carving through solid rock, and the immense financial cost present massive obstacles to the canal ever moving past the proposal stage.

Special Treatment: Iranian officials have indicated that while new fees will be charged for ships using the Strait of Hormuz, "friendly" nations such as China will receive special considerations. Beijing has generally viewed open passage as being compatible with regional toll or service fee mechanisms. 

China's Resilience: Despite the severe impact of blockades on global markets, China is uniquely positioned to weather the crisis. Thanks to extensive strategic petroleum reserves, a massive electrified transportation sector, and robust clean-energy dominance, China has avoided the worst of the economic shocks.

Geopolitical Stance: China has criticized the U.S. and Israeli naval actions but has used the crisis to promote itself as a stable global partner rather than engaging in direct military confrontation.

Resource:

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

Looking Back in The 1940's In Portland's Anti-Semitism

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

                                                  

OHS photo. Minor White photo. Portland. 1940. Intersection of SW Front and SW Madison looking west.

In the 1940s, Portland’s Jewish community—largely centered in the South Portland neighborhood—navigated a landscape marked by both overt discrimination and social exclusion. While there were no widespread violent riots, local antisemitism mirrored national trends: Jewish residents faced restrictive neighborhood housing covenants, employment discrimination, and exclusion from elite social and country clubs.  What times these were;  anyone not a White Protestant would be facing discrimination, not only us Jews. 

The United States officially declared war in WWII in two primary stages following the attack on Pearl Harbor:   December 8, 1941: Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan.  December 11, 1941: Congress declared war on Germany and Italy after those nations declared war on the U.S. with Franklin D. Roosevelt dying on us on April 12, 1945.  We cried and cried in school.  He was president for so long we thought he was our supreme father.  

Neveh Zedek on SW 6th and Hall was an early Russian-Jewish congregation founded in Portland in 1895.The original Neveh Zedek was established to serve Eastern European and Russian Jewish immigrants who were fleeing persecution, acting as an important counterpoint to Portland's earlier, more German-centric congregations. It was my paternal grandparents' shul, and then ours, too. 

 In 1940, Neveh Zedek (now known as Congregation Neveh Shalom) was led by Rabbi Meyer Rubin. The synagogue frequently lacked a permanent rabbi during this era and relied heavily on its longtime Cantor, Abraham Rosencrantz, who also acted as an interim rabbi, led religious services, and directed the congregation's Talmud Torah.  I attended starting as a 5 year old in 1939 onto 1949 when I became a teacher there going through confirmation at 12 or 13 in 1946-1947. 

Polina Olson, historian: Olsen tells us the story of the Neighborhood House, a place that South Portland European immigrants went to to learn how to be Americanized in the early 20th Century. Created by the National Council of Jewish Women in 1897, the Neighborhood House modestly began as a sewing school. When the house was built in 1910, it grew to be a place for the community with athletics, a Hebrew School, classes for immigrants, and clubs. It was still usable by 1940.  

During the 1940s, Portland's Jewish immigration shifted focus to European refugees escaping Nazi-occupied territories and the Holocaust. These newcomers, alongside returning WWII veterans, bolstered traditional institutions but struggled to find housing, leading them to settle in South Portland before eventually fanning out to eastside and southwest neighborhoods.

During the 1940s, Portland’s Black population surged from roughly 2,000 to over 20,000. Thousands migrated to the Pacific Northwest to work in the wartime shipbuilding industry. Confined by strict housing discrimination and redlining, most of the new arrivals were forced to settle in the Vanport housing project or the Albina district. Vanport was actually built in 1942, but the rapid wartime migration meant thousands of Black workers were living in Portland and the surrounding area during the 1940s. Because of strict redlining, these residents were heavily concentrated into specific temporary housing areas and the Albina neighborhood.Between 1940 and 1960, the African American population in Albina grew dramatically as white residents moved out. More than 21,000 left for the suburbs or other Portland neighborhoods.

  Portland’s Black community primarily jitterbugged and danced in the historic Albina district, a thriving hub for jazz and rhythm in North and Northeast Portland during the 1940s through the 1960s.

During the 1940s, jitterbugging and swing dancing exploded in popularity across Portland, with crowds of servicemen and locals frequently packing grand regional ballrooms. The most popular local hotspots of the era were the Golden Canopy Ballroom at Jantzen Beach Amusement Park on Hayden Island and the Uptown (Palais Royale) Ballroom on 2115 West Burnside St. 

Social and Institutional Exclusion: Prestigious local institutions, such as the Waverley Country Club, Arlington Country Club and University Club maintained strict policies excluding Jewish and Black members. Blacks were excluded in the other country clubs such as Alderwood,  and Portland Golf Club,  in Portland as well. Because of this widespread discrimination, Black golfers and community members founded their own organizations, such as the Leisure Hour Golf Club in 1944. They were largely restricted to playing at public courses, primarily Eastmoreland Golf Course, which was one of the few places welcoming to Black players Similar unwritten quotas and restrictions were common in banking, medical fields, and corporate hiring.      

                                           

Temporary Imprisonment: Before being sent to desolate concentration camps like Minidoka in Idaho, around 4,000 Japanese Americans were detained in the Portland Assembly Center (which is the site of the present-day Expo Center).  Before becoming the large event venue it is today, the Portland Expo Center was a livestock exhibition facility, constructed in 1921 for the Pacific International Livestock Association. It had held cattle and smelled of manure.  The Japanese had to move into THAT!.  In 1942, during World War II, the site was transformed into the Portland Assembly Center (or Portland Temporary Detention Center). The U.S. government used the livestock buildings as a forced detention camp to incarcerate nearly 3,700 Japanese Americans from Oregon and southwest Washington before sending them to permanent, long-term incarceration camps.        

                     Our house was across the street.  

In the 1940s, Ladd's Addition was a settled, middle-class "streetcar suburb" experiencing the WWII-era boom. Once restricted, the area was formally opened to Chinese residents by 1939, though federally backed redlining maps from the era unfairly classified the neighborhood as a "declining" area due to "infiltration of undesirable racial elements". This is where we lived.  We had lots of Chinese families here.  Our potluck Abernethy School dinners were so multi-covered and tasty !   

Portland Assembly Center: The 1940s brought forced incarceration for Japanese Americans. The Portland Expo Center, used first as  a livestock exhibition hall, was transformed into the Portland Assembly Center, where roughly 3,700 people were imprisoned in prison-like conditions, ultimately resulting in the loss of their property and businesses.     

Housing Discrimination: Redlining and restrictive covenants were heavily utilized across Portland. Real estate deeds in developing neighborhoods explicitly barred the sale or rental of properties to Jewish individuals.

Far-Right Movements: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, a localized, vocal subset of white supremacist and interwar fascist groups were active in Oregon. These groups peddled antisemitic propaganda and conspiracy theories, laying the ideological groundwork for radical right-wing groups that would occasionally surface in subsequent decades. 

Silver Legion of America (Silver Shirts): Active in the Pacific Northwest, this pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic paramilitary organization led by William Dudley Pelley maintained a visible chapter in Oregon. The group operated openly in the 1930s before being heavily suppressed by the federal government at the onset of WWII. 

German-American Bund: Portland hosted a local chapter of this pro-Nazi organization, embraced by the Third Reich as the hub of the American Nazi movement. The local branch regularly met in the city and was known to circulate virulently anti-Semitic newspapers, such as the Nachrichten.

Former Klan Splinter Groups: Following the collapse of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, former Grand Dragon Fred Gifford formed the National Crusaders, while other displaced leaders established the National Brotherhood. These factions splintered further but remained focused on white supremacy and anti-Semitism well into the decade.

Community Response: Facing these pressures, and deeply shaken by the Holocaust, local Jewish civic leaders engaged in protests and rallied for international relief. Many recent immigrants or refugees from Europe who arrived in Portland during this period found it necessary to keep their religious identities hidden to avoid prejudice from neighbors and in schools.