The success of Jewish retailers in the Old Port (see Middle & Fore Street Businesses Trail) from the 1920s onward was remarkable, especially if we consider the context of pervasive discrimination against Jews, Catholics and African Americans in Maine’s biggest city during that time.
By the early 1920s, the Portland City Council had a sizable Jewish and Catholic representation, especially in Ward 3 (which had a heavily Jewish population). But in 1923, Portland residents—influenced by the powerful and very anti-Catholic local Ku Klux Klan—voted to streamline the way the city was governed. Instead of an elected mayor and a city council made up of more than two dozen aldermen and councilors representing each of the city’s nine wards, Portland (and its Protestant elite) installed a five-seat council made up of at-large members and replaced the mayor position with a city manager chosen by the council. The result was an all-white, all-Protestant city government, thus depriving other communities of a voice in city hall.
Local historian and Rabbi Professor David Freidenreich has also shown that in the 1930s, Portland’s bankers and real estate agents systematically discriminated against Catholics, Blacks and Jews through redlining (the practice of denying or limiting financial services to certain neighborhoods based on racial or ethnic composition). They defined neighborhoods with a significant “foreign-born, negro, or lower grade population” as “hazardous”, rendering homeowners in those neighborhoods ineligible for mortgages or other property-based loans. Indeed, an annotated Home Owners’ Loan Corporation insurance map from 1935 emphasizes the Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish communities in the Bayside, East End, and Munjoy Hill neighborhoods in Portland. Jews and African Americans were also excluded from social clubs until 1969 – later than anywhere in the country except Florida (Stop D01).
Of course, racial, ethnic, religious and other kinds of prejudice and discrimination do not just disappear on their own. Portland’s Jewish leaders went on the offensive, using a range of often interrelated tactics to combat these external threats to the Jewish community. These tactics included shaming perpetrators, calling for boycotts, using the law, vigorously and publicly promoting Jewish culture and institutions (and getting city and state leaders to show their support), and reaching out with media and education to the wider (non-Jewish) community. For example, in 1930, Jewish Judge Max Pinansky—together with other city leaders—founded the Inter-Racial Fellowship of America to spread the message that “Americanism” included tolerance, civility and appreciation of diversity among the 18 “races and nationalities” living in Portland. The group sponsored talks and public meetings featuring leading speakers, often religious, from around the country. Another example was with the state’s Anti-Defamation League (led at the time by chairman Dr. Benjamin Zolov), which sponsored an anti-hate campaign called “The New Frontier Series” on Portland’s news and talk radio station, WGAN. It argued that discrimination undermined community, and sought to end discrimination against minorities in higher education, housing, public accommodation and the clubs.
Jewish leaders also led by example—seeking and holding key professional and public posts to demonstrate what it meant to be “good Americans”. Pinansky was a municipal judge (1927-1937), state senator (1934-36), and member of the Portland School Board and the state Public Utilities Commission. Barney Shur (Stop E06) was Chief Corporation Counsel for the City of Portland (1946-1971). Judge Louis Bernstein was elected to city council in 1922, appointed recorder of the municipal court in 1948, and served as a municipal court judge (1952-1958). Sumner Bernstein (the nephew of Judge Louis Bernstein) was the only Jewish member of the city council from 1955-1961. Other prominent examples were Justice Sidney Wernick, Dr. Benjamin Zolov, and Linda and Joel Abromson (Stop D05).
In the 1930s—in addition to external threats—the Jewish community also faced internal challenges. Jewish Portlanders, and their children, were retreating from religious orthodoxy and from the synagogues, which had been the locus of community life. Thus, Jewish leadership embarked on a phase of non-denominational Jewish community institution building – what Judge Julia Lipez, currently of the Maine State Judicial Court, called “A Time to Build Up.” The most conspicuous and successful of these new institutions was the Jewish Community Center (Stop D03), which was designed to give locals a confident identity as Jews, as Portlanders, and as Americans. Among other successes, the JCC birthed a generation of leaders who took the helm in building the Jewish community, and in building Portland.
The Downtown Trail also highlights the role of Portland Jews in establishing Preble Street—one of Maine’s biggest service providers for those experiencing homelessness, hunger and poverty (Stop D04), in promoting civic discourse on racism and homophobia, and in creating a vibrant and rich culture. In fact, Portland’s current cultural abundance is due in part to the contributions of Jewish Portlanders who took leading roles in expanding the city’s cultural life, especially in film, art and music, as we shall see at The Movies on Exchange St. (Stop D06). And nationally, a Portland Jew became one of the most important American movie moguls of the early C20th (Stop D02).