Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia

A visit to Jewish Portland

Nessim Menashe, born on the Isle of Rhodes in 1887, came to Portland in 1909. By 1914, he had established a shoe repair shop in northwest Portland, which he operated until 1921. (photo from Oregon Jewish Museum and Centre for Holocaust Education, OJM 03274)

Reading the history of the Oregon Jewish community can feel like reading B.C. Jewish history in a carnival mirror. Everything is familiar but just a little out of place.

Since the sister communities of Vancouver and Portland share both common history and common concerns about the future, there is much we can learn from each other. This is one reason why the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia is excited to be hosting a trip to Portland in late May.

The three-day, two-night trip will take participants to historic sites and Jewish restaurants, and introduce them to engaging locals. Travelers will eat at Aviv, Lefty’s Café, Katchka, and Kenny & Zuke’s Deli. They will visit the Oregon Holocaust Memorial, Oregon Jewish Museum, Powell’s Bookstore, Beth Israel Historic Synagogue, Portland Art Museum, Oregon Historical Society Museum, Portland Rose Garden and Portland’s South End Jewish neighbourhood. They will also enjoy a curator-guided tour of the Oregon Jewish Museum.

As in British Columbia, it was the gold rush that attracted the first Jews to Oregon. German-born Jacob Goldsmith and Lewis May opened a general store in Portland in 1849 and helped found the Masonic Temple the following year. The community’s growth kept pace with the rapidly growing city and, in 1858, the Reform congregation Beth Israel was established. Jews had a disproportionate presence among the merchant class, with one-third of the 146 merchants on record in 1860 being Jewish. They worked in the industries of clothing, tobacco, furniture and wholesale.

Just 328 kilometres north, the Jewish population of Victoria followed a similar trajectory. The earliest arrivals stepped off boats arriving from San Francisco in 1858. They, too, established careers primarily as merchants and, in 1863, opened Congregation Emanu-El, which continues to operate today. In the 1870s, Jewish merchants began placing their bets on the future of a small encampment on the Fraser River, going by the name of Granville. These bets paid off when Granville became Vancouver in 1886, the terminus of the intercontinental railway.

The Jewish populations of Portland and Vancouver have grown dramatically over the decades since, with new arrivals from all corners of the world making their contributions. In both locations, community organizations blossomed early on, providing essential social and cultural services. Today, the Jewish population of Portland, at 50,000, is roughly double that of Metro Vancouver, thanks largely to a wave of young American Jews who were drawn to Portland in the wake of the 2008 market crash.

To learn more about the Oregon Jewish community and to experience it firsthand, join the JMABC-led trip, which departs by chartered bus on Monday, May 27, and returns Wednesday, May 29. For more information and registration, visit jewishmuseum.ca/program/portland-jewish-history-tour. The deadline to register is March 31.

Researching Oakridge

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia is currently researching an exhibit on the Jewish community in the Oakridge area. (photo from Gail Dodek Wenner)

Oakridge was for many years the heart of the Vancouver Jewish community. First opened for development in the 1940s, the new residential neighborhood was attractive to young families seeking suburban living only a short drive from downtown.

Many Jewish families had previously made their homes in Strathcona, Mount Pleasant and Fairview. With the economic boom of the postwar era, many achieved financial success and, with it, the opportunity to move to the comfort of Oakridge. Jewish community institutions followed, most notably with the construction of the new Jewish Community Centre, which opened in 1962.

photo - Growing up in Oakridge — Growing up in Oakridge. *(photo from Gail Dodek Wenner)*

Today, the neighborhood still holds a warm place in the hearts of many. For this reason, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia has been working to develop an online exhibit celebrating the heyday of Jewish Oakridge. Making use of numerous oral history interviews, this exhibit will share the recollections of community members, and aim to provide a comprehensive picture of this era in our community’s history. A new series of interviews are currently underway, filling in gaps in previous research.

Under the supervision of the JMABC’s exhibition development team, made up of coordinator of programs and development Michael Schwartz and archivist Alysa Routtenberg, two volunteers are undertaking this series of interviews.

Junie Chow has volunteered for the JMABC for almost a year now, and recently produced the online exhibit Letters Home. Drawing upon the Seidelman Family fonds, the exhibit shares the letters written by Pte. Joseph Seidelman to his family at home in Vancouver as he fought on the frontlines of Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele during the First World War.

photo - The wedding of Sandy Belogus and Mark Rogen — The wedding of Sandy Belogus and Mark Rogen. *(photo from Sandy Rogen)*

The second volunteer, Josh Friedman, brings to the project his training as a recent alumnus of Indiana University graduating with a BA in Jewish studies and political science. New to Vancouver, Friedman is excited about discovering how the Jewish community in Oakridge reflected similar and different perspectives to trends in North American Jewry during the 1940s-1960s.

Listening to earlier rounds of interviews, essential themes have appeared. These include the initial motivations for moving to Oakridge, the overwhelming sense of community among residents, and even the eventual reasons for moving out of the neighborhood. However, through this process, new questions have also emerged and are guiding the ongoing research. For instance, how did the local community react and respond to world events affecting Israel and international Jewry? Acknowledging that Oakridge is a multi-ethnic neighborhood, the team is seeking insight into the types of relationships that existed between non-Jewish and Jewish neighbors. All of the results will be shared in the forthcoming exhibit.

Currently online are the exhibits Letters Home and New Ways of Living: Jewish Architects in Vancouver, 1955 to 1975 (see jewishindependent.ca/the-west-coast-style). As well, the JMABC has launched On These Shores: Jewish Pioneers of Early Victoria, which traces the early foundation of the Victoria

Jewish community from their arrival in 1858 to the establishment of Congregation Emanu-El in 1863, and Sacred Sites: Dishonor and Healing, which reflects on Victoria citizens’ response to the desecration of the Jewish cemetery there in 2011, and places this incident in context among other similar events elsewhere. Sacred Sites was produced through a partnership between the JMABC and the University of Victoria.

To visit all the online exhibits, go to jewishmuseum.ca/exhibit.

Museum jazzes up website

The new Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia website, jewishmuseum.ca.

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia has launched its revamped website, unveiling a new look for the organization, simplifying navigation and making it easier for users to engage with the museum’s diverse programming and to access the holdings of the B.C. Jewish community archives.

The website, jewishmuseum.ca, features a contemporary design. Implementing the archives database system Access to Memory (AtoM), the new site gives researchers access to thousands of documents, photos, audio and video items documenting the 150-year history of Jews in British Columbia.

“For the first time in the history of the JMABC, we have the capability of providing online access to the treasures in the archives, while at the same time adhering to important archival standards,” said archivist Jennifer Yuhasz. “We are excited to join the vast community of professional archives already using AtoM, including UNESCO, World Bank Group Archives, Library and Archives Canada, and most of the provincial, municipal and university archives and libraries across B.C.”

Selections from this archival collection are presented in the form of online exhibits recounting specific themes and events in community history. Exhibits will be added each year.

The production of the new site was made possible through the support of the Betty Averbach Foundation, the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver, numerous private donors and the more than 100 contributors to the JMABC’s 2014 Indiegogo campaign. Its launch follows the introduction of a new graphic identity for the museum and archives, designed by local graphic design firm Adria Consulting, which also redesigned the website.

Important elements of JMABC’s new look include a new wordmark, new typography, a palette of vibrant colors and a suite of facet shapes drawn from the Star of David. Together, these elements celebrate the diversity of B.C. Jewish history and the innovative spirit of JMABC, and they will be implemented throughout all of JMABC’s print and online materials, unifying the organization’s public presence as never before. The public were given their first taste of the new identity at the recent JMABC exhibit, Fred Schiffer: Lives in Photos, presented this spring as part of the Capture Photography Festival.

“Our new look reflects the exciting work we are doing, always seeking new ways to share our community’s rich history with everyone,” said Michael Schwartz, JMABC’s coordinator of programs and development. “Adria understood this immediately and devised an identity that boldly conveys our core principles.”

JMABC is dedicated to the collection and sharing of community memories of Jewish life in British Columbia. With 300 linear metres of textual records, 300,000 photographs and 725 oral history interviews, it chronicles all facets of the community’s history.

Schiffer photograph on display for first time since 1999

Arthur Erickson, circa 1970, Vancouver. (photo by Fred Schiffer; JMABC)

photo - Mirtha Legrand, circa 1953, Argentina. Legrand was the stage name of Rosa María Juana Martínez Suárez — Mirtha Legrand, circa 1953, Argentina. Legrand was the stage name of Rosa María Juana Martínez Suárez. (photo by Fred Schiffer; JMABC L.23933)

Thanks to the B.C. History Digitization Program and the Young Canada Works program, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia (JMABC) now has more than 1,700 photographs from the Fred Schiffer Photography collection available for viewing on the Yosef Wosk Online Photo Library (flickr.com/photos/jewishmuseum). This is only the first of many phases in the processing and digitization of this collection. The JMABC is also in the beginning stages of developing both a physical and online exhibit of Schiffer’s work.

The Fred Schiffer Photography collection (circa 1940s-1999) contains approximately 80,000 photographs and four metres of textual records and artifacts. Most of the digitized material is from the Vancouver series (1958-1999), which documents family groups, weddings, news celebrities, judiciary, film, stage and music personalities, and many more. Portraits digitized include Vancouver citizens of all walks of life juxtaposed with prominent B.C. personalities (both Jewish and non-Jewish). A smaller portion of the digitized photographs represent his work from when he lived in Buenos Aires.

photo - Chief Dan George, May 3, 1971, Vancouver — Chief Dan George, May 3, 1971, Vancouver. *(photo by Fred Schiffer; JMABC L.24421)*

Fred Siegfried Schiffer was born in Vienna on April 1, 1917. A law student at the University of Vienna until 1938, he reached England as a refugee shortly before war broke out. He was the sole survivor of his family of five, all of whom perished in the Holocaust. In England, he met his wife Olive, whom he married in 1942, and began his distinguished career as a photographer. Olive and Fred had two children, Jennifer and Roger.

In 1948, the family set off to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, Schiffer became a respected artistic and commercial photographer. In 1958, when political unrest in Argentina became unbearable, the Schiffer family moved to Vancouver. Schiffer opened his studio on Seymour Street, where he quickly became Vancouver’s top portrait photographer.

Schiffer had an impeccable eye and a gift for revealing portraiture, as is evidenced in these selections from his collection.