Irene Goldbaum Balk

Tanzer: Irene, where did you and your family come from?
BALK: My family originated in Odessa, Russia – a small village near Odessa. They [my parents] met when they were young people. My father was an apprentice for my mother’s family as a tailor. He learned his skill from that family and then he went to work. His father had died when he was very young. In fact, I think he was two or three years old. His mother remarried and he was unhappy with his stepfather. He decided he would move to find his way and he just started wandering around. He learned his trade as a tailor and lived with other families that he worked for, and did babysitting for while he was living with these people. I don’t know how much to go into detail on that. But I do know that he met my mother living at one of these places, when she was in her young teens, and they decided – when her sister and husband decided to move to South America – Buenos Aires, Argentina – they decided they would move out too, rather than fight in the Russian Army for whom they had really no true allegiance. 

They had [family] that had moved to other lands. They decided that would be a good idea for them, too. Since my mother’s sister had gone to Argentina they thought they would go and they live there. My father supported the family. My brother Al [who changed his last name to Grant] was born in Argentina and they decided that rather than staying… I’m glad that they had the chutzpah to pick themselves up and, with the few dollars that they had, become one of the early boat people to come [inaudible] . . . to Ellis Island. 

My brother Larry and sister Betty could probably tell you more details. They were born before myself – ten, twelve years earlier. There are stories that I could tell you, but I don’t know how much detail to get into. I just want to tell you briefly that they came to Ellis Island and stayed in New York City, like so many did, or on the Eastern Coast, and they came to Portland to live. This was 1911. They had been in touch [with people in Portland], evidently. Now, exactly how, I’m not really prepared to tell you all of that. I’m just giving the sketch of what they did do and that was travel from Russia, Argentina, New York, and Portland, and they’ve been here and stayed.

Tanzer: Did they have family here?
BALK: They had distant relatives like Joe and Bertha Sherman, who were distant relatives, and the Stein family.

Tanzer: So they weren’t really coming to a place that was completely foreign?
BALK: No, not completely foreign, no. But they were more or less on their own. They had no support. I mean, there weren’t agencies set up in those days, no second language classes to attend. They learned in the market place. [tape skips] Al, he was about…I think not a year old, maybe six to nine months, when they came here. Then after that they started having more children and that’s Marilyn Chalmer’s mother. Then Larry. 

Tanzer: Her [Betty’s] last name is?
BALK: Now it’s Stone. It was Saul, and then – well I guess I told you how they got here.

Tanzer: Did they ever talk about the trip across the country?
BALK: No. Now I wish that I could have talked more about what they felt.

Tanzer: Where did they settle when they came to Portland?
BALK: They settled in South Portland. If I had known that you were going to get me on this family history thing, I would have brought my brother Larry. I’m just giving you a short sketch. How they arrived and what they found when they came here was not a lot of help. When I was little and growing up, I really didn’t get into that. I was just not asking questions so much as accepting the way they were. I feel we had a good life. My father provided for us always in what small way he was able to do with his skills. He worked for Meier & Frank when he first got here. That’s how he got started, as a tailor. He was skilled in that area and so he was quickly hired. And then when he was able to save enough money, he bought his own business. He started downtown on Southwest Third, right across from the Multnomah Hotel. How he provided for his family . . . . [inaudible]

After the three children – there was Al then Larry and Betty. Then, ten years later, I came along. I’m almost 60 now. I’m 59. My brother Al died when he was 54, in 1964. So they settled in Northeast Portland. How that came about [was that] they found living in South Portland a little unbearable. I’m sure it wasn’t very pleasant, the housing situation, and my dad just wanted to move away from there. Why they chose Northeast instead of Southeast or another area, I do not know. I’m not sure whether the Sherman family, the Levinson family – how they came about to move and stay in Northeast Portland, I don’t know.

Tanzer: When you moved to . . . .
BALK: Well, I wasn’t born yet, but my mother, father, Al, Larry and Betty [moved]. Now, they were just small children, then Dad happened to find – and don’t ask me how he found this place, because now I’m thinking as we’re delving into it. How he found the house is a good question and why, I would like my brother Larry to be here to answer that. He might know. He knows the parts that I can’t remember, as a rule. This was their own home, this is what their dream was, was to be their own property owner with no one to tell them where to be, what to do. 

I think throughout our family… Well, let’s face it, most people want to be free and do what they want, but I think maybe… I meant, it was more important to have a decent place to live than to be surrounded by [tape skips] perhaps. I don’t know what was going on in his mind, really. But he wanted the family, he was from that generation [tape skips] …supporting your family [skip] …the best you could do. All your energies just toward that end was the most important thing in the world.

Tanzer: Was he a traditional Jew?
BALK: They came from a traditional background where he had an education in Hebrew. He was able to daven and he filled in as cantor in the Tifereth Israel Congregation that he helped found with families in that area. But this was the kind of Jew that came to the Northeast side [laughing]. I mean that people could join their own little get together and have their own services. I’m almost sure they all had – I know the people enjoyed them when we got together. I used to love to listen to the old folks and that kind of thing, but how they got themselves together to organize a congregation on their own? I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. That is on record and it originated in 1912. But now I’ve forgotten your question.

Tanzer: My question was how observant was he?
BALK: They were used to eating kosher meat. I remember having a deliveryman coming to our house with kosher meat from South Portland. That continued until… I don’t know what year, but I know we stopped when we couldn’t afford it. When the family got bigger they couldn’t afford to sustain that kind of lifestyle, I guess, or traditions. I don’t know how they felt about giving it up, since it was a part of their life as they were growing up.

Tanzer: Let me ask you, Irene – first of all, they moved to the Northeast side and you alluded to the fact that they first had a very small shack…
BALK: Mmm hmm. House. What we referred to as a shack when we got older.

Tanzer: Do you remember that house?
BALK: Oh, that was our playhouse, after our folks had moved from that to the new home that was built next door. My father bought that property – two lots on Northeast 20th and Alberta. At that time, it became our playhouse. It became a garage. It was good for sketching. It stayed there until finally, I don’t know what year, but it was demolished. On that property, our dad had a garden every year. He always had his tomatoes and cucumbers. That was his turf, and that’s where we stayed until we got married, most of us [laughs].

Tanzer: How many children were there ultimately in the family?
BALK: Well, mother had a child that died, and after that she had six of us.

Tanzer: So there were six children in all. Tell me who comes fourth.
BALK: Fourth [was Pearl] and then came Faye, who’s now Faye Menashe. [She and Pearl were] a year and a half apart. All of us were. Her name is Pearl Gressle. Between all six of us, we produced 22 grandchildren, kinehora. That was the family.

Tanzer: Let me [tape skips] ask you about the formation of the synagogue. You say that it was formed in 1912. What was your father’s role in it?
BALK: I can’t remember the beginning of that because I didn’t [tape skips]. We didn’t have the – frankly, the saykhel – to really get in together. But like I said, I’m going to have to refer to my older brother and sister [tape skips] …through with that kind of information, because I don’t really know how he…. All I know is that they were all friends. It was like a [tape skips]. They knew each other first, I’m sure, and then they just automatically knew they had to have a synagogue within walking distance. Then they found this house. There was the Veltman family too, that was another family that was very close. Those folks lived on Northeast 18th, up two blocks or so. Those families that I mentioned, Jacob Sherman and Joe Sherman and Harry Levinson and Peter Goldbaum, they lived within less than one mile of each other.

Tanzer: Did you spend much time with the other families?
BALK: Did I, myself?

Tanzer: Did the families spend much time together?
BALK: We were invited for tea. We never had large dinners, you know like families invite each other for dinners, and all that. We had guests for tea and we’d go to their house for kiddush after a service or something. I remember walking (didn’t need to ride) back. It was a neat thing to be able to do. 

Tanzer: What are your first memories?
BALK: My first memories? Well…and another thing, too, that I’m leaving out, that probably had to do with the trend that’s happening now with Yiddish here in Portland, is that we were raised in a gentile area. My mother always felt [she didn’t want] to offend her gentile neighbors by putting out a wash on the line on holidays, Christmas or Sunday or anything like that. So she was very conscious of the difference, and shy [tape skips] …to assimilate.

Tanzer: Oh, that [tape skips]
BALK: Very much so. Well, because the situation of finding yourself in an area where you are a minority. The nature of this family is to be able to relate [tape skips]. To do this easily, they had to learn the English language, as most of their generation did. So I don’t think it was easy. Like, I found it wasn’t easy, because we also settled in Portland. We are still in Northeast Portland. We don’t find it that difficult if we want to, but even if the [synagogue is] down the corner and you’d go in for a minyan, or if they need you on a morning or something like that, it’s still not that easy.

Tanzer: Did you go to Hebrew School?
BALK: I didn’t go. They had a Sunday School in the synagogue, a very minimal amount of teaching, and we could go if we wanted to. It wasn’t a compulsory thing for us to have to attend. When you’re a child you have a natural instinct as to your getting anything out of a class or not and I don’t think we did. That was a good reason why we didn’t want to go.

Tanzer: Who were the teachers?
BALK: I can’t remember the teachers. I really can’t.

Tanzer: There was an east side Hebrew School. You did not attend that?
BALK: There was later. I think that was in my 20s, so that would be about over 30 years ago. But before that, I don’t think there was. It was what they called a Sunday School, affiliated with the congregation, but it wasn’t where they had a principal or paid teachers or anything like that, I don’t believe.

Tanzer: Let me ask you about any type of social activities, in either South Portland with the Neighborhood House or Jewish Community Center.
BALK: Well my older sister [tape skips] … Al left home when he was 19. He just felt that [tape skips] … because they were 12 years . . . . and with all these babies and all this. My mother said he just took off. He taught himself dancing and he became a comedy and dance man. And he was on the road at eight years old [age most likely incorrect]. But he left… let’s see, he was 19, so a good nine, ten years of it. We used to enjoy him coming through town when the performers used to come through and play at the Capitol Theater.

Tanzer: So he was a vaudevillian?
BALK: Oh, yes, yes. I’d see him perform at the Oriental Theater. He [tape skips] … done lessons my father couldn’t afford it, so he did pay for dancing lessons when he was a young man. He paid for them by selling papers and things like that. He was his own man, really. Then Larry, his social activities he developed away from home, wherever that landed him. I used to read the letters to my mother. She didn’t go to school. Where she was raised girls weren’t sent to school; she used to enjoy my reading Al’s letters and I used to write for her to him. As I was growing up I was sort of in the middle between the older group. I was sort of the intermediary person and I used to hear her problems that she had with the older ones. 

But the social thing that we as kids got into… I’m thinking about Larry, my brother Larry [tape skips]. That was with… oh, what was that synagogue? Ahavai Shalom. That YPL group, those were the young adult groups that they got into and [tape skips] … I travelled by streetcar to the Jewish Community Center to get into a lot of activities – Hadassah, B’nai B’rith – as did my sister Faye. We did seek activities away from Northeast, because there wasn’t anything provided there. We didn’t think it was such a hardship to go, but that’s how we did get there. I mean we weren’t driven. We took the Alberta Streetcar; that they wish they had now. It really was a [convenience]. Cheaper too, I think.

Tanzer: Where did you go to high school?
BALK: [tape skips] . . . Most of us went to Jefferson High School. Then I graduated and then I went to night school, to University of Oregon art classes. I went also to Hastings Business School, where I learned to improve my secretarial skills.

Tanzer: Have you always been interested in art?
BALK: Oh always, yes, since I was six. I remember drawing pictures for my girlfriends who needed paper dolls and clothes, or draw portraits of themselves in high school.

Tanzer: Was that encouraged by your family?
BALK: No, it’s just that they had a love. It was just what you feel when you’re home. How do you describe a feeling when how when you’re [tape skips]…? They don’t sit down and teach you and take you to classes. It wasn’t that kind of a lifestyle that we had. Whatever we gained, we had to go out and seek. But what we got at home, as far as being artistic, was something that was a born instinct, I guess. Al with his music and Larry with his writing [tape skips] … we all had artistic bents. 

Music we always had in the house. We had a piano. A lot of ivories missing, but we still [played]. I cried when it was sold. But Al had a piano too; he was a good pianist. In fact, his kids are good too. Tom Grant is his son. You know Tom Grant? So he came by his talents honestly, too. [tape skips] I just have to explain that Tom Grant and Michael Grant are sons of Al and Celia Grant. My two brothers changed their names from Goldbaum to Grant about 25, 30 years ago, I think. 

Tanzer: Irene, have the rest of the members of your family continued at Tifereth Israel?
BALK: We continued to be members until I knew I was getting married in 1946. I was active in [tape skips] …I was elected before I got married. I have to say that in 1945 is when I was elected to be the Brandeis Camp student from Portland. That’s 1945. [tape skips] Went to Brandeis Camp in the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania – just marvelous. I just will never forget that. I’m sure I was [tape skips] … my interest in Jewish organization work. I was active in Junior Hadassah.

Tanzer: What other things? Was that the –
BALK: That was it, and B’nai B’rith Girls. That was it in those days. But [tape skips] …I made application and [tape skips] …I felt very privileged and learned a great deal. I think it enriched my life. [Meeting] Max Helfman at camp was the thrill of my life. The young people that we met from all over the country – there were very few of us from the West Coast. I was very privileged, I felt, to be chosen to go there. But I had to come back and organize Young Judea, which I did. After that, having thoughts of getting married to Hy, who I met during the war – the big one, [World War] Two.

Tanzer: How did you meet Hy?
BALK: We were going to a dance and he called me. He found my name. He was stationed in Camp White in those days. [tape skips] . . . Because I was active in Jewish Community Center social kind of life, I went to the dance and that’s how we got to know each other.

Tanzer: Let me ask you about your activities and meetings. Hadassah – 
BALK: All of those meetings were held at the Jewish Community Center on 13th.

Tanzer: Tell me about the Jewish Community Center. What was it like for you?
BALK: It was a marvelous. It was a meeting place where you could go. Or, if you weren’t going to a meeting, you could go if they had a concert or a dance. During World War Two, we spent a lot of time there entertaining – fundraisers for our organizations and a way to meet young people, our own local people. But that was before the war. I’m not saying that was the first time I started going there. I started going when I was 14 or 15. Not so much affiliated with synagogue affairs.

Tanzer: You were talking about activities at the Jewish Community Center and some of your meetings.
BALK: Well, I was interested in art, especially in those years. I was quite prolific. I did some abstract paintings that were supposed to symbolize, or they did symbolize, the activities that were carried on at the Center in those days. I’d love to know where they ended up since they moved their files and everything for the new Center. But I know I contributed about six or seven of them. That was while I was active in the Hadassah. You know what Hadassah is? It was just a very stimulating activity for a young Jewish person to be involved in.

Tanzer: Did you organize the Young Judea?
BALK: Yes, I did. Our first meeting I’ll never forget, because we were gearing this towards the ages of 11 to 13-year-old boys and girls. I learned about children from just trying to put 11-year old-boys together with 13 year old girls who were ready and willing and eager and everything to get a social thing going, but these little guys thought it was better to go watch basketball upstairs [laughs]. So there we were with our cake and punch, and the girls dancing with each other. But I believe I got it going for about a year and after that, because I was making my plans to be married. That involved moving away from Portland to St. Louis. That’s where Hy and I were married. But I did get them going and I don’t know who took it on after that. I lived away from Portland for two years, so after that I don’t know what really happened. I lost touch with that kind of social activity.

Tanzer: Tell me about your wedding.
BALK: Our wedding took place in St. Louis and my mother was able to come out. Not very many of our friends were able to come, in those days, ’45…

Tanzer: Why were you married in St. Louis?
BALK: Because Hy’s family were there, and his job. He had just been dismissed from the Army and he felt that having his job was more important. He didn’t have time to take a vacation to get married by moving to Portland and so on. So it just wouldn’t have been very productive for him to come here, so I moved to St. Louis and that’s why we were married there. He has a lovely family. 

I worked as a young person and I felt that St. Louis is an okay city. But when you’re starting out…. It wasn’t the most comfortable in those days – hot in the summer and cold in the winter and who needed it? I knew things were better here in Portland and so we finally decided to come back. That was in 1948, just after the big flood [laughs]. 

My dreams were a little harder to achieve after that horrible thing, because we needed to get into housing here. I remember tramping around Northwest Portland trying to find an apartment. In those days you couldn’t find anything very easily because of the Vanport people who were also trying to find [housing]. Also, because of the war, there were people… I don’t know. It was just a bad time for people then to find a place to live. But we did. We settled on NW Glisan for a while. Then I became pregnant in 1949 and Leonard was born, my oldest, in 1950.

Tanzer: How long did you live on NW Glisan?
BALK: Let’s see – from ’48 for a little over a year. Then we moved back when we knew I was pregnant. We found another place to live in Northeast Portland. And why? Because my family lived there and I thought that would be the ideal place to be. And as it turned out, I was closer to my parents and it was nice. We could walk there, my folks dropped in without any formalities, and we liked that. My sister was close by, and Larry, and Pearl. She was the pioneer. She [Faye] was married by then to Sam Menashe and they settled in West Portland because that was his favorite place. As it turned out, it was probably a good idea.

Tanzer: Did you once again become affiliated with Tifereth Israel?
BALK: When we returned to Portland we did feel a desire on both of our parts to join a synagogue. We felt because our parents went to Tifereth Israel and we were also in Northeast it was an easy thing to do, just to fit in. And we did. Not too many our age were there, though. But these were all members of families who were born, raised, or migrated from other places, but who’d settled in Northeast Portland, who were still there. It just seemed like the logical place for us at that time.

Tanzer: Did Hy also become active?
BALK: Oh, yes. We were instrumental in forming a young adult group that was called Stars of David. I have documents on their stationary. We really had a thing going and we were very welcomed by the older membership because many of their children were not involved as we were at that time, and they all came into this club. Members that were not even affiliated with the synagogue [came] because it was a young adult, married, single. As it turned out, I think it only lasted for about two years. But we raised funds for them; we had volunteer teachers for Sunday School. I could name you a lot of very fine people who volunteered their time. I had a children’s choir. So we had a really fine thing, I felt, going there at that time.

Tanzer: Who were some of the people who volunteered at the Sunday School?
BALK: We had Edna and Bunny [inuadible] Feves, and Myra Montrose. I don’t know whether she did, but those members that were in the Stars of David were the Balks, Feves, Lowman, Sy Danish, Harry and Sylvia Gilbert, Charlotte Green Klonoff, Florence Cohn and her husband…. and that’s all I can remember. Some people aren’t even here now, they moved away. But it was a good thing for us as young couples, who were just starting families.

Tanzer: How often did you meet?
BALK: We met probably once a month, in people’s homes. Then Hy became part of their board, the officials of the synagogue. In the early ‘50s, when our babies were little, believe it or not, I didn’t drive a car then. So I did a lot of work on the phone. I did their advertising and various secretarial work, and did things from the house, as I remember.

Tanzer: So it was an active group?
BALK: And how!

Tanzer: It’s very interesting because we don’t have any record of that group.
BALK: You can make contact with these other folks. The Lowmans have fond memories because those are good days when your children are young and growing up. No matter how things were, maybe they weren’t as productive financially or economically, we were just all getting started, more or less. So it was a wonderful time.

Tanzer: Why did the club dissolve?
BALK: Because they embraced both single folks and because it was such a small congregation, it seemed like we would just accept anybody who really wanted to have a social outlet of some sort with a Jewish organization. We thought that this little synagogue could eventually develop into a bigger congregation that would take care of many Jews who were still living in Southeast and Northeast Portland. We really, truly felt that if we could get a rabbi, if we could get good leadership there, that it would eventually be a finer synagogue than they had then at that time. But it didn’t work out that way. I’m not saying because the Stars of David dissolved, that that is the reason. But the trend of the city had a lot to do with what was happening to the flux of Jewish people moving away from the Northeast.

Tanzer: That’s what I wanted to ask you about.
BALK: I feel it had a lot to do, no matter if we had everybody thinking the same way and planning for this beautiful synagogue. At one time, it almost seemed, before the merger of Ahavai Shalom and Neveh Zedek, that Neveh Zedek could have merged with Tifereth Israel. That was a hope of many of us at that time in the early ‘50s.

Tanzer: And then would you have moved from the Eastside? Would the congregation have been absorbed by Neveh Zedek?
BALK: Well, that was something that I think they were hoping would have happened. I didn’t say that Hy and I decided that our children, when they were getting older, needed more education. We thought that it would be better for them that we become members of a bigger synagogue where they could get that education. That’s why we changed our affiliation.

Tanzer: Did you keep you affiliation to Tifereth Israel?
BALK: No, we didn’t really. They ask us to help participate sometimes and our hearts are still there.

Tanzer: Hy was president of the congregation?
BALK: He was president, yes, in 1951 [and] ’52. In those days, about 30 years after they had been founded, they felt they needed to expand at that time. They were looking for another location, but still on the East side. It happened simultaneously that this Lutheran congregation in Northeast Portland were also looking to move out of a building and we were looking to move away from NE Going. We had anticipated buying this building while Hy was still in office as president, so when this synagogue on NE Going had been put on the market (through the Frank Maguire Agency to sell and find a buyer), is when the synagogue found themselves involved in a civil rights problem. It became a problem only because the majority, who were the whites in that community, had objected to the fact that the buyers happened to be a black congregation that wanted this building.

Tanzer: Now when you are talking about the whites objecting, about whom are you talking?
BALK: I’m talking about the neighbors surrounding the Tifereth Israel Synagogue. They evidently did not object to the Jewish element at that time. If they did, there wasn’t anything felt. But when the black congregation in 1952 found this as a good location for their congregation to move into, they had put their earnest money on it. When some of the people – as I’m saying, the majority of whites surrounding this synagogue, found that it was black – and at that time in 1952, when James Meredith was also taking steps to exert his rights in Arkansas, the feeling across the country, anti-black feelings, were definitely being felt by us. 

Because they discovered that it was a black – the community discovered that it was black… We have documents to show that these are facts. It’s a sad thing to relate, because my husband was president at the time and our families had to take obscene phone calls from people. It was a hard time for Hy and myself, because we had a child who was born with a handicap and we didn’t know whether he was going to survive at that time. He was born in August 1952. All of this business with the synagogue, with this purchasing of a new synagogue at that time, became involved with the civil rights problem. We had to fend off people who were vehemently objecting to the idea. They wanted us not to go through with this sale; but we couldn’t do that, of course, morally. My husband said so and the papers had been printed up already. It was the Oregonian editorials and it was quite a little scene that we found ourselves involved with.

Tanzer: How did other members of the synagogue feel about it?
BALK: Some of them would have been very happy not to have had this problem, because it was most complicating. They didn’t want to stir up anything. I’m not saying that they didn’t want it to go through, but it was an awkward political and social situation.

Tanzer: Did the congregation try to dissuade Hy from going through with the sale?
BALK: No. They couldn’t in good judgment do that. The ADL, the B’nai B’rith, and other synagogues in the city had now gotten behind our congregating to be sure that…. They wouldn’t have to. As far as Hy was concerned, he and I felt that there was no reason why this congregation shouldn’t be a part of the community. However, it was a white community at the time, with a few blacks living in that area. They felt that property [values] would be declining. Some of them were property owners. It was a very awkward and very difficult time for my family, to have to answer to people who I just, in my younger years, had never experienced before. I grew up in this neighborhood. Let’s say it was a white neighborhood with a few Jewish families, and maybe one or two black families might have been living in that area. Of course, now times have changed.

Tanzer: But you had never felt a particular racial animosity when you lived there before?
BALK: Never, never, never, never. We just grew up in a family that was capable of relating to a new idea, to other people, to neighbors. It’s just the way we were raised.

Tanzer: Was it necessary for you to pay for legal counsel in these matters?
BALK: The legal counsel that we got was from David Robinson, who was then director of the Anti-Defamation League. He was instrumental in supporting us. The congregation had meetings to work this out. I’m sure they were floundering for a while. I had a sick child. I couldn’t very well sit in on a lot of these meetings, but I certainly was the one who took a lot of painful phone calls that were insulting. It was a very bad. I just can’t believe…. Anyway, it worked out, though. With all of the support, with the B’nai B’rith and the ADL and other synagogues throughout the city, the sale was made to go through. The new synagogue where they moved was located at NE 15th and Wygant.

Tanzer: In what way do you feel that this particular action in the ’50s has changed Portland or the Jewish community?
BALK: I don’t know that it’s changed the Jewish community so much. The Jewish community had been changing – not due to what’s happened here at all, I don’t feel. I think there was something else that was going on in Portland’s makeup as far as the migration from the Northeast side of Portland to move to the West side of Portland. There’s always been sort of a good-natured competition, I guess between Northeast and West and all that business. That was a trend of the city for Jews to go toward. Well, let’s face it, the Jewish Community Center and all the larger synagogues are on the West side and I can certainly see why people would want to move there. If they felt more Jewish, so be it.

Tanzer: Or needed the education.
BALK: Or needed the education, yes. But we did that by still living on that side of town. So I wouldn’t quarrel with that. But you’re asking about how this incident affected the Jewish population. I don’t know that it did, except by those few people who were involved.

Tanzer: What about the neighborhood?
BALK: The neighborhood of the Northeast had been occupied by the black population pretty heavily since World War Two. Because they were bulging at the seams; there was absolutely no other place where they could move but in the Northeast area, where many of them had already been settled since the war. I guess if there was a study made about the black population you would know that this incident that we experienced with our synagogue in selling to a black congregation was probably one of the steps that would occur whether or not we were there, because of population trends. I don’t know enough about that kind of science. I know it is that we are involved in that kind of thing, maybe unknowingly. But yes, there are more black families settling in Northeast.

Tanzer: You alluded to the fact that you felt this had changed Portland in some way.
BALK: Oh, that’s true. I did say historically. Well, I think it did help those people who were involved to accept a fact. It was a fact of life that we are all neighbors and we do have to learn have to how to deal with this. I mean, this comes naturally to some people, how to relate to another person who is different, whether it’s his skin or his religion. So if you have to put it down in some way I think that historically it might have made a difference to those people who were involved, and perhaps to their children in some way. They have children my age and grandchildren now, many of them. The Cogan family was involved. Lou Cogan, Dave Cogan were there. Their children were not members of the synagogue at that time, but they did contribute as they got older and felt that it was important. I don’t know that they felt the way we did at the time with this situation that was going on. It was a painful time, I think.

Tanzer: What is the composition of the synagogue today?
BALK: It has a lot of possibilities. I was worried that because of the older generation dying away and that people my age – there are still a few from the old board that are there. Like, the Pearlmans and Cogans are still there. My sister Betty Stone is there. It’s still thriving. Salmanson and do you know Minette? She and her husband are there, and Bud Sherman is there now. These are folks – well the Shermans have always been there – but some only came in in the recent ten years or so. There are younger people there. There is a group of young people, I hear, in Portland, who would like to be a part of it. There’s a young adult group that would like to have their services there, I understand. I think it would be great. The building is there, I’m sure it’s paid for. It’s for anyone who would like to be there, but whether they want to go there now, I don’t know.

Tanzer: That group was just to meet . . . 
BALK: For services, for the holidays.

Tanzer: Are services held at Tifereth Israel on Friday nights?
BALK: Some Friday nights. There aren’t enough people, sometimes, to have a service. But you would have to question people who are there, because I’m not involved with the mechanics of it anymore.

Tanzer: I just wondered if the daily minyan is still functioning.
BALK: Not the daily minyan, no. Those that would go there are not living now.

Tanzer: Are any of the other members of your family involved with Tifereth Israel?
BALK: Yes, Betty. She was Saul, is now Stone. She is.

Tanzer: But no one else.
BALK: No one else.

Tanzer: They’re affiliated with other congregations.
BALK: That’s right.

Tanzer: Irene, why have you felt so compelled to talk about this now?
BALK: It seems to be a time in my life that I’ve become aware of events that are happening now, with antisemitism growing more and more. It’s disturbing to me that people can hate one another so vehemently and can cause so much hurt and pain, when if they could only think in terms of the way the people – the way our congregation, some of our congregation – felt in 1952. When there was another minority, the black minority at that time was looked upon as something that was not desirable to be in our neighborhoods. That we didn’t even realize – well, of course our minority, the Jewish minority, had their problems with having a chance of being accepted in certain schools and so forth. But the blacks have had it too. So I’m thinking in terms now of – we have to support one another because we are minority ethnic groups.