who we are

Matzah Bloc is a group of Jewish activists and allies local to the greater Portland area who believe in mutual aid and community care over institutionalized systems. We are dedicated to ensuring that "Never Again” means immediacy and inclusivity, with a dedicated focus on fighting systems of oppression. Matzah Bloc acknowledges that we stand upon the stolen lands of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, and Molalla people. As a group of radical leftists who oppose institutions of harm and oppression, we at Matzah Bloc openly condemn the state of Israel and its acts of violence against the Palestinian people.

Matzah Bloc stands in solidarity with the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities, along with all other under-represented and/or oppressed groups. While many Jews of Color exist, they are often silenced or disregarded; our work is incumbent upon the decentering of whiteness in the Jewish community and beyond. We welcome Mizrahi, Sephardic, and all members of the Diasporic Jewish community to join us in providing a radical left voice for Portland.

Never Again is NOW

Recovering from the atrocities of the Nazi holocaust of World War II, many American Jews declared that *never again* would they allow such atrocities to happen to them or anyone else. Since that declaration, there has been noted silence from white Jews in America, particularly regarding the subjugation and harm of non-Jewish, non-white communities within the United States. We at Matzah Bloc and other progressive Jewish groups demand acknowledgement that “never again” means NOW, and not when it’s convenient or exclusive to the white Jewish lived experience only.

To do this work, it’s important to recognize oppression on American soil, as it occurred in the past, and as it’s occurring now. In the 1940s, the Third Reich looked to Jim Crow Laws in order to craft racial discrimination legislation, first against their Jewish population and then against their Black, Romani, and queer populations. While the Nazis were rounding up those considered socially undesirable and putting them in camps, the United States placed Japanese-American citizens into internment camps, and developed eugenics practices that were later adopted by the Nazi regime. The United States sterilized and performed medical experiments on Black and Indigenous people, while also stealing their children to place them in boarding schools. They sent Black children to reform schools for minor or fictionalized infractions, while incarcerating adults in untold numbers. They erased pasts, destroyed futures, and repressed generations with cultural and physical genocide. It’s been 80 years since World War II, and many of these crimes are still being enacted against our communities of color.

We at Matzah Bloc recognize that slavery did not end with the 13th amendment, but continues through the US prison industrial complex, disproportionately exploiting BIPOC labor and negatively affecting their communities. Immigrants of color are treated as “undesirables,” placed in concentration camps, sterilized, and neglected. Our Black neighbors are being murdered by those donning the guise of “protectors,” in the streets and in their homes, and the murderers walk free. All this, on stolen land.

We acknowledge that these struggles are inherently global in nature. As Angela Davis pointed out in many lectures and articles: The struggles in Palestine, Ferguson, Minneapolis, Portland, and all across America are one and the same. As such, Matzah Bloc stands in solidarity with those who fight for justice in Palestine against Israeli settler-colonial occupation and the apartheid state. We believe in full accountability of power structures and that the Israeli state has not been held accountable for its actions against Palestinians. For these reasons, we identify as staunchly anti-Zionist.

We will not be silent anymore.
Never Again is NOW