In the spring of 2018, the Maine State Museum in Augusta will open what will be the largest exhibit on Maine Jewry ever presented

Although, until recently, never more than about 10,000 strong, Maine’s Jewish community has always reflected the themes that have characterized the more than three and one-half centuries of Jewish life in the United States (1654-2016):

• A belief in the promise of America.

• Faith in the pluralistic nature of America.

• A quest for economic and professional success.

• A commitment to the survival of the Jewish community.

Maine Jewry has sought to balance its American social contract, the notion of being a “good American,” with the understanding that they were part of a “holy community,” whose essential purpose was to “be a light unto the nations,” and that those nations would understand that redemption could only be achieved through the moral and ethical life, individually and collectively.

For those Jews who began to come to Maine and Portland from Eastern Europe in the 1860s, many of them to escape from the oppression of Czarist Russia, the state seemed a reassuring haven. When Portland celebrated its centenary on July 4, 1886, Barnard Aaronson, designated to speak for the small Jewish community of the time , observed:

“We number 60 families, and over the majority portion being of the middle or poorer class, yet content with their lot…. The form of religion is Orthodox, and yet (we) are thoroughly liberal in thought and action.”

In looking back at the 20 years since the Great Portland Fire of 1866 had attracted a group of Jewish merchants and peddlers to help the city’s efforts in rebuilding, Aaronson could only find a positive relationship to his Christian neighbors: “…our city fathers have in the past fully merited the good will and affectionate esteem in which they are held by us.”

Yet, Aaronson was more cautious about the future: “We sincerely hope nothing will occur in the future to mar the harmonious feeling now existing between the denominations….”

He had every reason for such caution. As two of the other speakers during the program recounted, the religious past had been, at best, a difficult one.

The Rev. J. G. Wilson, representing the Abyssinian Church, one of the first African American churches in America, spoke of a Portland past that included slavery, physical violence, and religious and racial exclusion.

No less appalling was the history of the Roman Catholic presence recounted by Bishop James Augustine Healy of Portland: “In those days (1830s and 1840s) it was difficult, almost dangerous, to show a kind face or fair dealing to Catholics.”

Healy concluded his frank historical assessment, “Let us remember… when the name Catholic was like a badge of ignominy in our town.” He was less frank, and with good reason, about his racial background, which was one half African American, the result of his mother’s status as a slave in Georgia.

But Aaronson’s optimism was not an illusion. Unlike Jewish life in Europe, where Jews were by far the most visible and persecuted minority over a 2,000-year period, Jews in Maine could be comforted in the knowledge that other groups, especially Roman Catholics, often stood ahead of them as victims of religious and sometimes racial intolerance.

Yet there was a problem. The classic Yankeefied Puritan spirit, in which the Maine Yankee was recognized as the most authentic, played a decisive factor in shaping the image that the state of Maine wanted to project to the outside world and to itself. It was an image that sought to confront, overwhelm, and neutralize the “religious dissenters, profane economic opportunists, and non-English immigrants (who) disrupted the region’s Puritan and, later, Yankee culture and identity.”

That confrontation was highlighted in the 1920s by the presence of the Maine Ku Klux Klan, led by F. Eugene Farnsworth, who, at a Klan rally, threw out a challenge to the anti- Klan opposition:

“Gather together all the anti-Klan voices you can – Catholic, Negro, Jew, and Italian – all the gang, and I wouldn’t give you 10 cents for the whole bunch….”

By the late 1960s, Maine’s Jewish community had achieved a position of recognition, both in terms of its involvement in social welfare and the prominence of its business and professional communities. But the opportunity for Jewish business people to socialize with their Christian counterparts beyond the 9 to 5 workday was a rare or even non-existent occurrence.

This was especially true of institutions where business and professional groups met on the golf course or over the two-martini lunch or dinner. The same was true for many of Maine’s summer resorts where Jews were not welcome, and in exclusive Maine neighborhoods where certain covenantal restrictions excluded Jews and African Americans.

The historical record shows that Jews in Maine faced both the harshness of religious and social bigotry as well as receiving the help of non-Jewish politicians who shared their view of an ideal community and helped to break down the barriers of discrimination.

Among the most important of these was a non-Jewish Republican legislator, Sen. S. Peter Mills of Franklin County, who in 1968 attended a panel in Portland where he stated that it was a good thing that Maine was free of intolerance toward Jews or any other groups. He was told by a friend, a Jewish lawyer from Portland, that this was not the case – that the new director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra had just been turned down by an exclusive Portland club simply because he was a Jew.

“When I was driving home to Farmington that night,” Mills remembered, “this information bothered me terribly. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought it was a disgrace that the state of Maine could tolerate such a situation where a person could be barred because of race, religion or color.”

As we enter a time of political and social uncertainty, perhaps an exhibit highlighting the story of one old “New Mainers” community and its struggles to overcome prejudice and discrimination and yet maintain its religious ideals can be a lesson for those current immigrant and refugee “New Mainers” who must find their own voices and carve their own futures as Americans.

Abraham J. Peck, a historian at the University of Southern Maine, is the co-author (with Jean M. Peck) of “Maine’s Jewish Heritage” (Arcadia Publishing, 2007) and a member of the Maine State Museum’s Jewish exhibit advisory group.

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