ABSTRACT
The next chapter also examines a small institution. Judith Margles takes a tradition in US immigration-the neighborhood settlement house-and uses it as a common point in bridging the experiences of early twentieth-century Jewish immigrants to the city of Portland, Oregon, and contemporary refugees fleeing persecution in such places as Burma and Sudan. The comparative exhibition that resulted from this effort yielded numerous benefits, including collaborations between and among the communities and the museum as well as greater public understanding of new migrants’ experiences. While the involvement of new populations was not a complete success, the exhibition process enacted many of the transcultural aims of other institutions. More importantly, the cross-cultural and cross-generational exchange forced everyone involved to move from conceiving of migrants along a single vector of identity-their origin-to envisioning them in multiple ways and endowing them with the possibility of replicating the successes of the earlier settlers, many of whom retained distinctive identities as members of the Jewish minority while succeeding in a new land.
