Rabbi Levi Wilansky is the assistant director of Chabad of Maine. Feel free to join Chabad’s public Seders on April 1 and 2. For more info, or to RSVP, visit ChabadofMaine.com/Passover2026.
When people from outside Maine hear that I’m a rabbi in Portland, many people are intrigued to learn about our thriving Jewish community. In fact, our city has a rich Jewish history that goes back further than most people realize.
Jewish life began in the 1870s and ’80s, when Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe settled in the Munjoy Hill and East Bayside neighborhoods. Arriving with little money and minimal English, they worked as peddlers, tradesmen, tailors and small shopkeepers.
Despite their modest means, they had a great sense of community. According to Benjamin Band’s 1955 History of Portland Jewry, “The Jewish community in the late 1870s functioned as one large family … The joys and distresses of individuals became community affairs. Before Passover, for example, when a few Jews traveled to Boston to purchase provisions for the festival, they carried with them order lists from family.” (p.14)
In just a few square blocks, three synagogues were established — first in people’s homes, and then in brick and mortar buildings. This earned Portland the nickname “Jerusalem of the North.” The neighborhood had Kosher butchers and bakers, a Jewish burial and free-loan society and communal institutions like the Jewish Home for the Aged and the Jewish Community Center on Cumberland Avenue.
Judge Louis Bernstein, a prominent leader in Portland’s Jewish community, noted in a 1976 oral history that growing up, “Every Friday night or every Jewish holiday, Yiddish prevailed. The seder, for example, was a complete Orthodox ritual. Friday night was a ritual … My father hired a rabbi to come to the house to teach us.”
This continued to the post-war era, when a group of Holocaust survivors who fled the Nazis settled in Portland. Among them was Cantor Samuel Zimelman, who served for over 30 years at Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh. His sons Sol and Paul went on to form the “Zimel Brothers,” and recorded albums of Chassidic melodies that are still in circulation today.
There were only remnants of that historic Jewish community when my father, Rabbi Moshe Wilansky, came to Portland in 1987 and founded the Chabad of Maine.
The Jewish Community Center and the Jewish Old Age Home had moved; the Chasidic Synagogue Anshe Sfard was torn down, and the remaining Orthodox congregations had dwindled to just a handful of elderly members. The Jews had moved up the socioeconomic ladder and the center of the community shifted toward Woodfords.
Over the past few decades, Southern Maine’s Jewish population grew from roughly 5,500 in the early 1990s to around 12,500 today. Chabad was among the array of institutions and initiatives catering to southern Maine’s diverse Jewish community — offering classes, holiday programs and a welcoming space for Jews of all backgrounds.
Through all the changes, one of the most-observed holidays has been Passover. Taking place April 1-9 this year, Passover celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in ancient Egypt. Jewish people gather with family and friends on the first two nights of the holiday for the Seder, the ritual Passover meal.
Chabad will be hosting communal Passover seders in Portland on Wednesday, April 1, at 6 p.m. and on Thursday, April 2, at 8:30 p.m. A delicious four-course meal with chicken soup, potato kugel, wine and Matzah will be served. All are welcome to join regardless of prior Jewish knowledge or synagogue affiliation. We are also offering seder-to-go kits and boxes of Shmurah Matzah for anyone who would like to host their own seder.
Although the Yiddish has faded from the streets, and the once close-knit neighborhoods have spread out, what has kept our people together for over 150 years are our beautiful traditions, and these will continue to do so for generations to come.
At the conclusion of the seder, we recite the words, “next year in Jerusalem.” This year, let’s say them once again in our own “Little Jerusalem.”