Voluntarism and Modernization in Portland Jewry: The B'nai B'rith in the 1920s

A decade ago Moses Rischin noted that scholars have just begun to examine how ethnic groups helped shape communities in the American West. ¹ In addition, historians have only begun to explain the converse condition, how immigrant groups adjusted to the new locales in which they settled. John Higham has suggested that a major theme in American history would trace how immigrants became modernized as they learned to balance their “primordial” loyalties to family and kin against the demands of technological efficiency and democratic political ideologies. ² For Jewish immigration and community organization in particular, Kenneth Roseman has argued that the central theme would trace a series of local adaptations by synagogues and voluntary associations to general American patterns. As Christian churches lost their welfare functions, as voluntary associations became more specialized and numerous, and as they subsequently consolidated and professionalized, Jewish communal institutions regardless of locale, did the same. ³