Changes in American Lives

 Nadene Goldfoot                                 

                                                                           

People are still aiming to get married here in the good old USA.  Why, when they have been co-habiting for years already?  Some still have decided they do want children, even if the world has gone mad.  Thank G-d, because we elders still want to be grandparents and have felt cheated in life without them.  We're still looking forward to a better future.  

    Portland, Oregon's China Town. We have minorities living in the USA.  Asian Americans make up 7.2% of our population.  

It's a mad mad world.  Orientals have been blamed for COVID though they had no connection with it and have been physically injured. 

 My family lived in a multi-cultural neighborhood in Portland and we had Chinese friends and neighbors.  We all got along fine; no problems.  A neighborhood is like a village, town, or city finding that the people in it all pool their talents to make life more pleasant.  We found the cuisine of each culture made great restaurants, giving us a great variety, which we craved.  Everyone had talents they shared, giving us so many pleasures we otherwise wouldn't have had.  It was called Ladd's Addition.

The Orientals in our lives of Chinese and Japanese plus from other countries make up about more than I expected.  Because they compose 7.3% of the entire U.S. population, the diversity of the group is often disregarded in media and news discussions of "Asians" or of "Asian Americans". 

Ladd's Addition is a streetcar-era neighborhood that has been preserved to look much the same as it has since being platted in 1891. The neighborhood is named after Banker, Investor and mayor of Portland William S. Ladd, who acquired land in the neighborhood in 1878.    During an era of anti-Asian American prejudice on West Coast during the 1930's, Ladd's Addition was one of the few places in Portland that informally designated it's neighborhood for Asian American residents.                  

Dr. DeNorval Unthank - an American physical and civil rights activities in Portland as well as one of Oregon's first African American doctors was once a resident of Ladd's Addition.             

Ladd Circle Grocery", Ladd's Addition, Portland, Oregon, photograph

Creator: Paul Tweten 

Copyright: All rights reserved, Paul Tweten

I always thought the planners put this together purposely mixing cultural differences.  It had been farmland of Ladd's being very fertile, and people moved here in the 30s who could afford the lower-cost middle-class homes.  My father moved here from South Portland's Jewish neighborhood for the larger homes and lawns. Our grade school of K to 8th was Abernethy. Other people were also leaving their cultural domains and daring to mix in with others.   

Vintage Abernethy of 1982, and I was a student in K in 1939!                                                      

  The handy shoemaker within walking distance of our home.  
       

The Italian shoemaker could do anything, the Italian vegetable wagon who came through the neighborhood straight from the wholesale house with the best fruits and veggies with such a variety;  we had so much showing up in grade school with out parent-teacher buffets that were put on with all the different countries' foods to eat.  I think where we grew up we learned that we all belong to each other and only want a peaceful existence.  My father ate veggies that weren't from a can for the first time, according to my mother.  

                                                   

Then I happened to move to eastern Oregon which to me was being in the county-side,  and found the same thing, only this time we had Japanese friends and neighbors.  I'll never forget the looking forward to their Buddhist Temple putting on a once a year take-out dinners that we all looked forward to.  We didn't have just cowboys and cattle and farms around us but the amazing Orientals, whose talents ran from a doctor who was head of all doctors in Oregon, Dr. Tanaka,  to the restaurants and gardens and farms making us feel so cosmopolitan,  giving us a wider perspective of life. My son and his partner, a Japanese lad, went to State in debate and came in 2nd!  They were the pride of Eastern Oregon, one Jewish and one Japanese, and they both now live in Portland.

Portland's Detention Center

The Japanese suffered from WWII.  All American Japanese were forced to become interned in terrible conditions such as the stockyards of Portland which was a blight on our government.    They were taken out the state they were in, like California and their lives were turned upside down.  I think all the Japanese people I knew in Ontario had been through this.  It was a situation that feared our government, causing them to ignore the Japanese as 1st class citizens with rights and locked them up, instead, a decision they came to in haste many hated later. It was almost worse than the Jews being locked up in ghettos in Vienna and other cities.        

And I?  I am a Jewish lady of which we only make up 2% of the American population.  Jews suffered from anti-Semitism since arriving in the States, but not my family in my old neighborhood, and we had at least 4 Jewish families that I can count; Padrow family from Jerusalem, Mozorosky, Bricker, and us.  

   Lazarus, a nice Jewish lady,  wrote a sonnet in 1883.  Born in 1849, Emma Lazarus was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes.                                  

She is remembered for writing the sonnet "The New Colossus", which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883.Our statute of Liberty says to give us the weak and weary.. "“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”  This was written by Emma Lazarus who had a humanitarian vision of the country.  Lazarus was involved in aiding refugees to New York who had fled antisemitic pogroms in eastern Europe, and she saw a way to express her empathy for these refugees in terms of the statue.                          

 Blacks Overview (Demographics): In 2021, 40.1 million people in the United States were non-Hispanic black alone, which represents 12.1 percent of the total population of 331.9.  Their history in Oregon was bad, which sent them to Washington, which was more accepting.  “The entire region of the Northwest… criminalized the presence of black people and the first black Exclusion Law included the Lash Law that said black people would be publicly whipped

every six months until they left the territory."— Walidah Imarisha, educator and writer.  In the 1840s, the region’s provisional government forbid slavery, while also banning Black people from settling in the area. When Oregon became a state in 1859, it was the only state admitted to the Union with an Exclusion Law in its constitution. That law remained until voters removed it in 1926, while the original racist language stayed on the books until 2002.

My very good friend, Dick Bogle and I, walked from Washington High home together every day, and I eventually did a study of his Black family and where they came from when we were adults.  He started off as our sports reporter, then a policeman to being head of Portland's Fire Dept, and in his retirement days had a jazz radio show.  His mother was a reporter for the newspaper.  We spoke about the circumstances he had gone through as a Black student in Portland, and I told him of incidences I had experienced about being Jewish among others who didn't know and how they spoke about Jews and how I reacted. That's when I learned about what Blacks were going through.  

Cinco de Mayo in Ontario, Oregon's Treasure Valley Community College, another holiday I enjoyed when living in Ontario.  Many of my students were Mexicans.  
  The HispanicOverview (Demographics): This ethnic group includes any person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. According to 2020 Census data, there are 62.1 million Hispanics living in the United States. This group represents 18.9 percent of the total U.S. population, the nation’s second largest racial or ethnic group after non-Hispanic whites. 

The white Source: United States census bureau. White Americans constitute the majority of the 332 million people living in the United States, with 71% of the population in the 2020 United States Census, including 61.6% who identified as 'white alone.'

Of the whites, Italian Americans  are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. According to the Italian American Studies Association, the current population is about 18 million, an increase from 16 million in 2010, corresponding to about 5.4% of the total population of the United States.  Italians were also neighbors of the Jews in South Portland, and got along well, with one grocery store on a corner and across the street the Jewish deli. 

Hall of famers Rocky Marciano, Lawrence “Yogi” Berra and Joe DiMaggio, all first-generation Italian Americans, served in the war. Vince Lombardi, the venerable hall of fame NFL coach and a first-generation son, received a waiver because he was married, had an infant son and was a full-time student at Fordham University in NYC.                       

The new Portland of today, wherever you go, you'll see tents....

According to the January 2022 PIT Count, 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness across America. This amounts to roughly 18 out of every 10,000 people. The vast majority (72 percent) were individual adults, but a notable share (28 percent) were people living in families with children.  Sudden raises in rent helped to push out some of the people and is happening again right here.                     

Originally Failing Grade School, now the classy National College of Natural Medicine in South Portland where my father and his siblings attended.  This is where he learned to speak English. Mel Blank, who created Mickey Mouse and all the others,  went to this school with my Dad.   

 My father grew up here, and they were all learning English in their grade school, Failing.  The main building of the present day National College of Natural Medicine, in South Portland, was originally an elementary school named for Josiah Failing, former Mayor of Portland.  The kids were teased for their English and for being in a failing school.  Oy!                       

So overall, the Blacks are holding marches and demonstrations demanding respect, while anti-Semitism has been growing so fast that the President has had to come out and create a law of protection while the Orientals are quietly regaining their old life, I hope, free of persecution now that COVID is lessening because vaccines have been more prevalent.  The USA would not be great without all of us.  That's why we are so great. 

 However, the country finds itself now divided between Republicans and Democrats, who are made up of mostly whites with our minority groups, and have lost that feeling of unity in their neighborhoods.  People are making decisions based on what?  It's more like preferring a sports club over another, as I see it.  Logic is not in the picture. We could wind up having Trump in prison instead of the White House, as president, as while he was just indicted, he is running for President, quite unAmerican.  

The problem is that not all Americans live in  quiet and tree-shaded neighborhoods of diversified people who are all pleasant to each other.  

Many live in high rises made up of all poor people who have problems connected with the poor and down-hearted.  Those are the lucky ones.  Suddenly, our country all over, wherever you go, are full of brightly colored tents with multi-faceted people of all sorts of problems, living alongside the avenues and by-ways of cities. The Homeless is a huge issue like a festering cut in your finger that isn't healing.  Ever since Homes for the Mentally problematic people were closed, this is the result.  We've gone from imprisoning people who use drugs to allowing a certain amount, and now communities are stepping over bodies of tenters taking over their lands. 

Rob Finch/The Oregonian  A unused ward entrance in the "J" building at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem in 2005.

One of the oldest mental hospitals in the US is the still-standing Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. Founded in 1813 by Quakers, the institution did not always have such a brief name. It was originally the Asylum for Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason, and it sought to house and treat the severely mentally ill. For much of the 1800s, institutions like this were a common sight in communities including Portland. They eventually gave way to much larger, warehouse-like institutions, which in turn were shut down in the mid-20th century. How we got to where we are today: a country that once locked away the severely mentally ill, to one that now sees them, daily, on the street tells the story.                

 Those that will be disappointed will be the thousands waiting at the border of Texas and Arizona to enter the USA.  It's not the country it used to be when I was young and that had huge problems.    Even water costs money to those living in homes or apartments.  Well, it always has.  Electricity isn't cheap, either.  All prices have gone up.   

 And this is the state of affairs as I see it from the 1930 to the 2020s.  90 years of vast changes.  We have a lot of mental problems in the USA and can blame progress:  WWII War, Korea War, Vietnam War, etc, alcohol, drugs for cause and effect.  We haven't solved either any of it though have been trying. Living together in towns and cities has always had its problems.     

 Resource: 

Edit: 6/10/23-added on paragraph

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lazarus-emma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans#:~:text=Source%3A%20United%20States%20census%20bureau.&text=White%20Americans%20constitute%20the%20majority,identified%20as%20'white%20alone.'

https://www.portlandmercury.com/history/2016/10/05/18611075/beyond-the-cuckoos-nest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans#:~:text=Source%3A%20United%20States%20census%20bureau.&text=White%20Americans%20constitute%20the%20majority,identified%20as%20'white%20alone.'

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

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/684287#:~:text=Ladd's%20Addition%20is%20a%20streetcar,in%20the%20neighborhood%20in%201878.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Failing#:~:text=The%20main%20building%20of%20the,school%20named%20for%20Josiah%20Failing.

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/

https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/article/oregon-black-pioneers-documentary/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2396502/

Jews of Oregon Arrived Early (Jewish American Heritage Month)

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Jews first arrived in Oregon in 1849, just years after the first Overland immigrations brought re-settlers to the region.  The vast majority, like Goldsmith and Wasserman, were immigrants from German lands; but rather than coming directly to Oregon from Europe, most spent years elsewhere in the United States before following the Gold Rush west and establishing merchandising networks anchored in San Francisco and extending north to Oregon. 

   Nyssa, Oregon -neighbor of Ontario and the Oregon Trail

Jacksonville , in the south near Medford, Oregon

Look closely and see Albany and Eugene south of Salem.  

Although the first known Jewish religious service in Oregon took place in Jacksonville in celebration of the High Holidays in 1856, and there is evidence of holiday observances and life-cycle rituals in other towns across the state, no lasting congregations or other Jewish institutions emerged outside of Portland in the nineteenth century, aside from a burial society in Albany that served communities from Eugene to Salem. Jews who lived in in the Willamette Valley or in more remote parts of the state often traveled to Portland to celebrate High Holidays or life-cycle events. Such trips provided opportunities to conduct business and to meet potential marriage partners.

 In 1869, Bernard Goldsmith, an immigrant Jew from Bavaria, was sworn in as the mayor of Portland. Two years later, he was succeeded in office by his friend, countryman, and coreligionist, Philip Wasserman, a former state legislator who would later serve on the city’s school board.

 Many Jewish pioneers, arriving as single men, delayed marriage until after they had established businesses and traveled to San Francisco or even to New York or Europe to find Jewish partners. It was not until 1858, after the arrival of several Jewish women and the birth of the first child, that a Jewish congregation, Beth Israel, the reformed Temple, formed in Portland. In 1861, the congregation erected the state’s first synagogue, with seating for two hundred; its consecration attracted many non-Jewish Portlanders and the attention of the press.

With Portland’s Jewish population nearing 500 in 1869, a second congregation, Ahavai Sholom, was founded by a splinter group of eight men from Posen, Prussia. Ahavai Sholom would emerge as a Conservative congregation, striking a balance between orthodoxy and the modern innovations of Reform. Beth Israel, after considerable discord over religious practice in the 1860s and 1870s, gravitated toward Reform. By the end of the century, Beth Israel had built a grand, two-towered synagogue that seated 750 people, a fitting structure for a congregation associated with Portland’s Jewish political and business elite. Its status was further elevated by its rabbis, Stephen S. Wise, who served at Beth Israel from 1900 to 1906, and Jonah Wise, who served from 1907 to 1926. Both rose to national prominence.

                   Neveh Zedek Synagogue's front view  

Two more congregations were founded in Portland in the 1890s, Talmud Torah and Neveh Zedek, which formed to accommodate the Eastern European and Russian Jews who were then arriving in Oregon. My grandparents went to Ahavai Sholom but their children went to Neveh Zedek where I attended and wound up as a teacher, starting my teaching career. I attended from K in 1939 to about 1960.  

In 1866, a Portland lodge of the B’nai B’rith formed. 

Jewish communities in eastern Oregon towns such as Baker eventually followed a similar course. Although the decline in population followed broader boom-and-bust patterns, the exodus was accelerated among families that longed to participate in a larger Jewish community and provide their children with a Jewish education. Such was the case of the Durkheimer family, for example. 

Julius Durkheimer ran stores in Baker, Prairie City, Canyon City, and Burns and served on the school board and then as mayor of Burns. Yet, fulfilling a promise to his wife, who longed to be closer to family and a Jewish community, they moved to Portland ten years after their marriage.

Between 1881 and 1924, the migration shifted from Central Europe eastward, with over two-and- one-half million East European Jews propelled from their native lands by persecution and the lack of economic opportunity. Most of those who arrived as part of this huge influx settled in cities where they clustered in districts close to downtowns, joined the working class, spoke Yiddish, and built strong networks of cultural, spiritual, voluntary, and social organizations. This period of immigration came to an end with the passage of restrictive laws in 1921 and 1924. Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe to the United States never again reached the levels that it did before 1920.

   Charles, age 4 and Moshe (my dad) at age 2 had parents that arrived  in the USA's golden age for Jews;  before 1921.  

After the German Jews had arrived early on, the eastern European Jews arrived quite late.  My father's parents came after first living in Idaho's mountain town of Council where they both landed somehow and then took the train to Portland in about 1906 after their 1st son was born September in 1906. This little kid standing will wind up owning the big cattle truck below.   

My father's business grew from his being a kosher butcher in Portland's shop on SW 3rd and Lincoln St by 1935.  He then formed his own business of Lincoln Wholesale Meats across the street with a slaughter house out of the city by 1953.  Finally, he bought out a business on Colombia River Blvd and renamed it Silver Falls Meat Packing Co which happened before 1960.  He was the main buyer of cattle so traveled all over Oregon to the auction Houses of cattle. Hermiston, Vale and LaGrande were places with cattle auctions.   He held his cattle before shipping in Ontario, Oregon where he settled down with his wife in his 2nd home from home in about the 70s. The distance across the state is 6 hr 7 min (375.4 mi) via I-84 E.                                          

                     My children in Ontario, Oregon

Otherwise, I think most Jewish people congregated in Portland.  We were the only Jews in Ontario, Oregon for most of the time, and had to drive to Boise, Idaho to attend the nearest synagogue.  I had been living in Ontario as my parents were there, and taught 4th grade at Lindbergh Grade School. Mom did stumble on another Jewish lady there and they became fast friends.  Her daughter was a counselor nearby, and she had a Jewish friend she worked with.  I remember one year when we got together and made latkas, not just from potatoes but we did it with other veggies as well.  Potatoes are the best, though.  

I have to mention:  Son took debate in high school and he and his Japanese partner went to Salem as winners and came in 2nd place from all of Oregon's high school debaters.  His partner became a lawyer and when an adult, moved to Portland. This speaks highly of the schools in Ontario compared to Portland.   Ontario had a small community of Japanese who were there from decisions during WWII and our government.  They were great farmers and had beautiful gardens at their homes.       

Resource:

https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/jews-in-oregon/#:~:text=Jews%20first%20arrived%20in%20Oregon,brought%20resettlers%20to%20the%20region.