Inaugural Portland Jewish Festival Brings Hip-Hop, Klezmer to Zidell Yards

Portland's South Waterfront turns into a stage for Jewish culture this Sunday when the inaugural Portland Jewish Festival takes over Zidell Yards from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The free-to-enter-adjacent event, open to all people, promises music, food and a canned food drive, according to organizers behind the city's first large-scale public celebration of Jewish life.

Marc Blattner, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, joined AM Northwest to preview what attendees can expect, as reported by KATU. The festival aims to share Jewish traditions, music and togetherness with the broader Portland community, and organizers describe it as an inaugural cultural celebration rather than a one-off event tied to a single congregation or cause.

The idea traces back to a 2023 community demographic study commissioned by the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, which found strong local desire for a large-scale public celebration of Jewish culture, according to Oregon Jewish Life. That 2022–2023 survey built on 2010 demographic data estimating roughly 47,000 Jewish individuals living across the Portland metro area, and it revealed a population widely dispersed on both sides of the Willamette River, per Chabad.org.

A Lineup Spanning Hip-Hop to Klezmer

The August 30 festival features performances from American-Israeli Hasidic hip-hop artist Nissim Black, rapper Kosha Dillz, Portland indie-folk musician Alicia Jo Rabins, and local Eastern European klezmer ensemble Carpathian-Pacific Express, the same Oregon Jewish Life report notes. The lineup spans genres from hip-hop to traditional klezmer, reflecting the event's stated goal of illustrating the cultural breadth of Jewish life in the region.

Oregon Public Broadcasting featured festival preparations on its daily talk show Think Out Loud on Friday, interviewing Blattner about the cultural impact of the gathering, according to OPB. The segment underscored the statewide attention the inaugural event has drawn, reaching listeners across Oregon and southwest Washington.

Why Zidell Yards

The chosen venue carries its own history. Zidell Yards is a 33-acre South Waterfront property that has been owned since 1912 by the Zidell family, which operated a major shipbuilding and ship-dismantling enterprise there before ending river barge construction in 2017, according to Sasaki. The site was originally established by an Eastern European Jewish immigrant family, adding a layer of resonance to the festival's location.

The property is also at the center of a much larger redevelopment conversation. The Portland Diamond Project has signed a letter of intent to purchase the former shipyard for a proposed 32,000-seat Major League Baseball stadium, and Oregon lawmakers evaluated public funding mechanisms for that proposal last year, per OPB.

Tickets, Security and Giving Back

Attendees can purchase tickets for the festival, with admission set at $10 for adults and $5 for youth ages 6 to 17, and free entry for children 5 and under, according to Travel Portland. Prices were set to increase on the day of the event.

Security represents the single largest expense of organizing the festival, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. Measures include mandatory entry bag checks alongside patrols by Portland Police and private security officers, planning that comes amid heightened national focus on security at public Jewish events.

Attendees are also being asked to donate a can of kosher food, which will be distributed to local food banks. That canned food drive directly supports Jewish Family and Child Service Portland, a local nonprofit agency providing social services, emergency assistance and hunger relief throughout the metro area, and festival volunteers were offered free admission for working food-donation shifts, according to the agency.

A Broad Coalition of Partners

More than 30 Pacific Northwest Jewish and civic institutions partnered to sponsor or staff booths at the festival, including the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, the Mittleman Jewish Community Center, and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, per the same Oregon Jewish Life account. That level of participation reflects a community-wide push to elevate Jewish visibility and civic inclusion across the Portland metro region as the inaugural festival gets underway this weekend.