The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is the largest museum dedicated to the documented and visual history of the Jewish people of Oregon, United States. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation, research, and exhibition of art, archival materials, and artifacts of the Jewish people.The museum's archival collection contains records of its various community-based and traveling exhibitions, cultural programs and events, and educational outreach about Jewish identity, culture, and assimilation.HistoryThe Museum began in 1989 when a Portland rabbi, Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, invited members of Portland's Jewish community to a meeting at his synagogue to explore the idea of creating the first Jewish museum in the Pacific Northwest.Some of the exhibits the museum sponsored in their first years include: The Jews of Greece; In the Footsteps of Columbus; The Legacy of Bezalel; Jews, Germany, and Memory, among others. These early exhibits were hosted in a variety of spaces including the Central Library, art galleries, other libraries and synagogues.In 1996, the Museum merged with the Jewish History Society of Oregon and acquired their archives, 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. The Oregon Historical Society provided a small office in which to store and process these papers. Today this collection forms the core of the museum archives.In July 1998, the hired its first director. At the same time, the museum moved into a donated office suite at Montgomery Park in Northwest Portland. When OJM left Montgomery Park in October 2000, the museum moved to a storefront location elsewhere in Northwest Portland.
