An Era Comes to an End in Portland, Oregon

I opened my mailbox here in Southeast Portland on Saturday morning and pulled out the last ever copy of The Jewish Review, the semi-monthly newspaper which has served our community in Oregon and Southwest Washington since 1959. Twenty years before I was born, and even longer before I eventually settled here.

A half century and then some of the Jewish Review Portland 1959. Not the scene we know today. Not according to a 1957 survey taken by the Jewish Welfare Federation of Portland, now known as the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. Out of a population of 570,000, they said, 7,892 were Jews. The majority lived in the Northeast and Southwest, almost half were self-employed, 68 percent belonged to a synagogue, and 46 percent were foreign-born. A Jewish newspaper, the JWFP decided, is what the city needed. Since the 1940s, federations around the country sponsored them. Portland’s last publication, The Scribe, stopped printing in 1953. The first issue of the Portland Jewish Review ran Jan. 1, 1959.

Jump, jump!

Not long after this first publication, the City of Portland then, in all of its infinite 'wisdom' at the time, and under the then-fashionable spell of urban renewal, so-called, declared "blighted" and bulldozed wholesale over 50 blocks of Old South Portland, the classic urban traditionally Jewish and Italian neighborhood immediately south of downtown; and replaced same with, fittingly enough, the only part of downtown Portland which can honestly be considered "blighted" today, anytime outside of 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday, largely made up as it is of parking structures, sprawling unnecessary landscaping, 1970's Soviet-style brutalist high-rise housing towers apparently designed solely to induce agoraphobia, and drab, snubbing-their-noses-at-our-streets-and-sidewalks, suburban-style, auto-oriented (pedestrians not welcome here!) sterile corporate complexes which compose the antithesis of the complete streets ideal which, fortunately, once again rules today's Portland. Ah, but I digress. As usual. Back to our topic...

The best newspapers are independent newspapers, unbeholden to any interest beyond the core values of journalism that make both for good newspapers and good democracies. However, institutional niche newspapers such as the Jewish Review serve a vital role within their community -- and one not served by other newspapers. With careful leadership and an understanding publisher, they can serve, fairly well, two masters: the values of good journalism and the goals of their publisher. It’s a compromise.

Having never worked in the newspaper industry, I can't speak to this in any way, but I think I get what he's saying. I absolutely get this part, though, regardless -

institutional niche newspapers such as the Jewish Review serve a vital role within their community -- and one not served by other newspapers.

A damned shame to see these go, especially one I loved... Throughout its time, the Jewish Review provided coverage of everything from general Jewish culture in and around town to capital punishment to Oregon politics to current events in Israel to the plight of Soviet Jewry to the 1988 murder of Ethiopian student Mulugeta Seraw by local white supremacists to Polina Olsen's priceless oral histories of Portland's Jewish community which pre-dates Oregon-statehood and beyond... This paper was there, and it stood for 53 years. Recording our history. Along with its Portland predecessors dating back 119 years -

1893-1901: American Hebrew News

1903-1919: Jewish Tribune

1919-1953: The Scribe

1959-2012: Jewish Review

I won't even pretend I can match such contributions, but I'd like to think that maybe I can possibly help every once in a while. I'll be trying.