Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education

Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education OJMCHE challenges our visitors to resist indifference and discrimination and to envision a just and i Be courteous. Do not solicit or market products.
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The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education explores the legacy of the Jewish experience in Oregon, teaches the universal lessons of the Holocaust, and provides opportunities for intercultural conversation. OJMCHE challenges our visitors to resist indifference and discrimination and to envision a just and inclusive world. The purpose of this page is to share information ab

out Museum programs and resources within the Oregon community as well as to share relevant articles and information about Jewish culture nationally and internationally. This includes a wide range of topics including trends in the museum field, antisemitism, Oregon Jewish history, and Holocaust history. Towards these goals, we welcome your contributions to our timeline wall about issues that are consistent with the Museum's mission. We aim to keep our timeline wall open and welcoming to many people who share a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives. Towards that goal, we reserve the right to remove posts and comments that violate our stated guidelines. Please remember the following guidelines when posting comments on our timeline wall:

1. Do not use vulgarity or threaten or abuse others.
2. Challenge ideas and opinions, but refrain from attacks against groups or individuals.
3. Repeated posts to our timeline wall may be treated as SPAM and deleted; repeat offenders will be banned.
5. Posts that promote misleading or historically inaccurate information will be deleted.
6. Do not use language which denigrates or disparages any cultural group or disenfranchised population. This page does not condone hate speech and hateful comments will be deleted. Please direct concerns and suggestions regarding the Museum's exhibitions and programs to [email protected]. In October 2017 OJMCHE moved into a new permanent home at 724 NW Davis Street on Portland's North Park Blocks. The museum opens to the public in our new location in June 2017. Beginning July 1, 2014, the Oregon Jewish Museum merged with the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center to become the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, the Pacific Northwest’s only Jewish museum, was founded to examine and preserve the cultural heritage of one of Oregon’s earliest immigrant groups and to bring innovative traveling exhibitions to the region. In 1996, the Museum acquired the archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Oregon, comprising major collections of organizational records, family papers, photographs and ephemeral materials dating from 1850 to the present—the largest collection of the documented and visual history of Oregon’s Jews. Today this collection forms the core of the museum archives and is available to researchers, students and scholars. The Oregon Jewish Museum endeavors to build a dynamic institution that embraces Jewish identity and community, illustrating, by example, the ways in which a community with traditional roots preserves, teaches, and lives by its values as a distinct minority. We believe in the power of culture to build and engage community in a flexible and dynamic way, using the lens of culture to shape dialogue about historical and contemporary issues.

The museum is open with free admission this Sunday, September 6! We're offering docent-led tours of our temporary exhibi...
09/06/2026

The museum is open with free admission this Sunday, September 6! We're offering docent-led tours of our temporary exhibitions and we have lots of fun new items in stock in the Ron Tonkin Family Gift Shop. See you there!

Public Tour of How We Show Up - 12:30 pm
Public Tour of One Nation - 2 pm

Attorney Irvin Goodman believed that every person deserves a vigorous legal defense, regardless of social standing. Born...
09/04/2026

Attorney Irvin Goodman believed that every person deserves a vigorous legal defense, regardless of social standing. Born in Portland, Goodman worked at the Meier & Frank department store to pay for his education at what is now Lewis & Clark Law School. From the late 1920s through 1958, he represented communists, union members, immigrants facing deportation, and a Soviet naval officer accused of espionage, defending the principle that equal justice depends on fair representation. By 1932 he developed a reputation as Portland’s leading radical lawyer. His career reflected a commitment to civil liberties during periods of political tension and public fear.

Learn how lawyers like Goodman strengthened Oregon's civic life through the pursuit of justice in How We Show Up.

Whether in the dance studio or the community, “Gussie” believed people could be brought together through creativity and ...
09/02/2026

Whether in the dance studio or the community, “Gussie” believed people could be brought together through creativity and service. Born as Augusta Kirshner Reinhardt in Salem, Oregon and educated in Portland, Gussie trained in modern dance in New York. After she returned home during WWII, she spent decades teaching dance and volunteering with civic and cultural groups such as Hadassah and the Robison Jewish Home Sisterhood. Her life reminds us that leadership isn’t limited to elected office. It can also be found through a love of the arts in both classrooms and performance spaces.

Discover Reinhardt's story in How We Show Up, where art and civic engagement come together to tell Oregon's Jewish story.

Join OJMCHE and our Old Town neighbors for First Thursday, September 3.Our doors will be open until 8pm and admission is...
09/01/2026

Join OJMCHE and our Old Town neighbors for First Thursday, September 3.

Our doors will be open until 8pm and admission is free!

Known as a Portland philanthropist, Joseph Shemanski started as a businessman. He arrived in Oregon in 1888, at age 19. ...
08/31/2026

Known as a Portland philanthropist, Joseph Shemanski started as a businessman. He arrived in Oregon in 1888, at age 19. After selling rugs and clocks door-to-door, he managed to open his own department store in downtown Portland, which he expanded into a thriving network of 53 stores on the West Coast. In his spare time, he used his wealth to improve the lives of others, focusing particularly on child welfare and prison reform.

Learn more about other Jewish Oregonians like Shemanski shaped our state's civic life in How We Show Up.

Sampson Friendly wore many hats. Born Sampson Freundlich, he moved West to make his fortune and become a successful merc...
08/27/2026

Sampson Friendly wore many hats. Born Sampson Freundlich, he moved West to make his fortune and become a successful merchant and civic leader. He served as Eugene's first Jewish mayor from 1893 to 1895 and on the University of Oregon Board of Regents, where he invested generously. Friendly believed education was essential to a thriving democracy, and his support helped lay the foundation for one of the state's most important public institutions.

His story is one of many featured in How We Show Up, celebrating the Jewish Oregonians who helped shape Oregon's civic and cultural landscape.

September 2026 OJMCHE Book ClubWednesday, September 23 | 11amThe book selection for September 2026 is Plunder: A Memoir ...
08/26/2026

September 2026 OJMCHE Book Club
Wednesday, September 23 | 11am

The book selection for September 2026 is Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and N**i Treasure by Menachem Kaiser.

To RSVP for this Book Club meeting or to stay in the loop about the group’s activities, email [email protected].

About the Book

Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret N**i tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to N**i plunder.

Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

Throughout her career, Ellen Rosenblum has worked to make Oregon's justice system more accessible and accountable. In 20...
08/24/2026

Throughout her career, Ellen Rosenblum has worked to make Oregon's justice system more accessible and accountable. In 2012, she became Oregon's first woman elected Attorney General, where she led efforts to protect the public from polluters, protect abortion rights and the rights of protesters. Her leadership reflects a lifelong commitment to public service and the rule of law.
Her story is one of many featured in How We Show Up, where generations of Jewish Oregonians demonstrate the many ways civic engagement can strengthen a community.

We're looking forward to celebrating with the community at Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Jewish Festival at Zide...
08/19/2026

We're looking forward to celebrating with the community at Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Jewish Festival at Zidell Yards on August 30! Please come say hello!

Judith Hankin is Eugene, OR-based artist and craftsperson. Her aesthetic is deeply rooted in Judaic themes, folklore, an...
08/18/2026

Judith Hankin is Eugene, OR-based artist and craftsperson. Her aesthetic is deeply rooted in Judaic themes, folklore, and natural symbolism. Find her laser cut paper art at the Ron Tonkin Family Giftshop at the museum.

Address

724 NW Davis Street
Portland, OR
97209

Opening Hours

Wednesday 11am - 4pm
Thursday 11am - 4pm
Friday 11am - 4pm
Saturday 11am - 4pm
Sunday 11am - 4pm

Telephone

(503) 226-3600

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