Museum Musings

Over a year later, we are still so excited that Margaret Anne Goldsmith, a descendent of the first four Jewish families to settle in Huntsville, Alabama, chose to donate a large collection of family heirlooms to the Museum’s artifact collection in 2012. In our collection, this family’s Southern experience improves our holdings by providing a meaningful counterpoint to the more well-known stories of the Jewish communities of the big cities, especially those on the East Coast.

All German Jewish immigrants, the Herstein, Bernstein, and Schiffman families settled in Huntsville in the 1850s and Oscar Goldsmith arrived soon after; subsequent generations united these four families in marriage. Members of the family have figured in every phase of the history of that city, both economically – from the agrarian years of the nineteenth century through Huntsville’s growth into “Rocket City” after World War II – and socially – from the time of institutionalized slavery before the Civil War to segregation to the civil rights era.

Ms. Goldsmith has been very generous with her legacy, sharing her family’s story through many outlets and donating or lending heirlooms and papers to several museums and libraries. She recently donated land to the city for a nature preserve and an elementary school, and established an artist’s group that works closely with the nature preserve.

We are proud to present a new installation of artifacts from this collection on the first floor of the Museum, which is free to the public. In addition to those artifacts we are also displaying more artifacts upstairs in the core exhibition, and more will be installed in the coming months. When you visit, see if you can pick them out!

But the objects that are now on display are the tip of a wonderful Alabama iceberg and the collection we received consists of many letters, photographs, books, business ephemera, and personal artifacts ranging from clothing and candlesticks to shaving mugs and poker sets. It is currently being inventoried and photographed before it is formally accessioned, a process that will be ongoing through the coming months. This phase will involve continued research, condition assessment, and careful measurement of each object as it is processed into our collections management database and coded so that it will be easily accessible to scholars and curators. Additionally, each object will be safely rehoused so that it can be preserved for future generations – an incredibly important part of our mission.

The Goldsmith family is to be commended for their careful stewardship of these artifacts over the years, and we can’t thank them enough for making the decision to donate them to the NMAJH!

Contributed by Claire Pingel, Chief Registrar and Associate Curator
May 1, 2013

Margaret Anne Goldsmith poses with a grandfather clock and a portrait of herself by Maurice Grosser that she recently gave to the Museum in memory of the Bernstein, Herstein, Schiffman and Goldsmith families (2011.151)

Those of us who come from families with military connections know that during holiday seasons, it is especially important to remember the sacrifices of Americans who are serving in the US Armed Forces.  As they fight to restore liberty to people across the globe and maintain our freedom at home, many Jewish soldiers celebrate Passover far from familiar surroundings. A Stars and Stripes article about a military Seder in Europe caught my eye yesterday and made me think of similar stories that have become a part of our artifact collection in recent years.

Wartime Seders organized by or for soldiers are nothing new and there are documented examples dating back to the Civil War in America. During World War II Passover, when families and friends come together to retell the story of the ancient Israelites’ liberation from bondage, took on very contemporary significance due to the extreme suffering of Europe’s Jewish communities.

   

 

 

I have to say, I wasn’t so surprised to hear that Sheryl Sandberg had formed Lean In, a new movement and book to empower women to take their rightful seats at the table and pursue their personal and professional goals. That’s because Sandberg’s bat mitzvah story is a part of our traveling exhibition presented with Moving Traditions,Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age, which will be on view at the Jewish Museum of Florida beginning April 9th*. The exhibition shows how bat mitzvah evolved from a radical, 1922 innovation by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and his daughter, Judith, into a nearly universal American tradition. At its essence, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age is a story about how individuals shape and change tradition, which is just what Sandberg calls for in Lean In: starting the conversation and inspiring women to find their voices and become changemakers.

 

 

 

Sheryl Sandberg became a bat mitzvah in December of 1982 at Temple Sinai in Miami, Florida. For that occasion, she was twinned with refusenikKira Volvovsky of Gorky, USSR, who was unable to celebrate her own bat mitzvah under an oppressive Soviet regime.  Did Sandberg’s bat mitzvah, a rite her mother and grandmothers never had the opportunity to enjoy, inspire her to work toward changing the nature of women’s leadership roles in the workplace, at home, and in their communities? I wonder, too, if twinning with a refusenik (the “social media” of the 80s?) encouraged her to now challenge the status quo in a big way.

 

 

 

So though a flurry of recent press focuses on her superhuman ability to have it all as a working mom—balancing engaged parenting with the demands of a high-level career—Sheryl Sandberg’s propensity to reach out, lean in, and take action actually dates back a few decades.  How perfect that Bat Mitzvah is on its way to Miami, the city where Sandberg came of age.

 

 

 

At the end of her video pitch for the Lean In project, she sums up the importance of this endeavor with simple reasoning: “This is about believing in yourself.” As Sandberg and the dozens of other women in Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age have shown us, bat mitzvah wouldn’t be the ubiquitous rite it is today without the girls (and their parents and their rabbis) who believed in themselves, and in the dynamism of Jewish life, enough to take a risk and start a conversation.

 

 

 

- Contributed by Ivy Weingram, Associate Curator

 

 

 

*You can still catch the exhibition through March 29th in the Janice Charach Gallery of the JCC of Metropolitan Detroit.

 

 

 

 

 

The Museum is honored to exhibit this series in recognition of the centennial of the United Synagogue’s founding. 

National Museum of American Jewish History, 2009.46

Gift of Jordan B. and Lorraine S. Cherrick of Saint Louis, Missouri, U. S. A., in loving and blessed memory of Adam Cherrick, J. J. Greenberg, and Elie Schwartz

 

At the NMAJH, we love to encourage every visitor to participate in conversations about American history and its intersections with contemporary life, and to add their own personal stories to those that we tell in our exhibitions. In this spirit, we recently added a new feature to the Museum’s free-of-charge first floor that allows our youngest visitors to join in the fun while learning about a historic community leader.  

 

Last month, we installed three prints of a portrait of Dr. Solomon Schechter (1847-1915), an esteemed rabbi and lifelong educator, on the Museum’s first floor. Rabbi Schechter’s legendary commitment to learning is commemorated in an international network of educational institutions that bear his name, and he is also remembered for his leading hand in the 1896 rediscovery of the Cairo Geniza. 

 

In February 1913, Rabbi Schechter led a group of 22 synagogues in founding United Synagogue, which became a national organization supporting the educational and spiritual life of American Conservative congregations. This year United Synagogue celebrates 100 years of tremendous achievement in enriching synagogue life, youth programming and education, social justice, and environmental activism.

 

In addition to providing a riveting look at a leader of worldwide importance, when shown together, the two artist’s proofs and the final etching of a portrait of Rabbi Schechter by Hermann Struck (1876-1944) provide an exceptional view into the renowned landscape and portrait artist’s process of representing one of American Jewry’s most distinguished leaders. 

 

In January 1913 The New York Times characterized Struck, who was then touring American cities to sketch our modern urban landscapes, as “a most striking example of the reconciliation between the new and the old…between modern culture and the oldest ideals and traditions of his ancient Jewish faith.” This pull between tradition and innovation can be seen as the quintessential drama of American Jewish life and it is a story that is repeated throughout the Museum’s galleries. Although he focused on sketching American cityscapes with skyscrapers – which he called a “giant wonderland” – during this trip to the United States, Struck also executed many portraits while he was here.  

 

 

Future community leader Jocelyn Kraut seeks her muse. 

 

Near the installation of the etchings, we have added a table where children – and in more than one instance adults – have been busily executing their own portraits and self-portraits after reading about the inspiring leadership example of Rabbi Schechter. Our budding artists are encouraged to bring their work to the Museum’s gift shop so that it can be added to a growing online exhibit that you can view here.

 

-Contributed by Claire Pingel, Chief Registrar and Associate Curator

February 28, 2013

 

 

 

Last summer, I was honored to meet with Edward H. Rosen, one of the Museum’s emeritus Trustees, to accept the donation of a treasured memento of his encounter with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
In 1965, a few months after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King received a Humanitarian Award from Golden Slipper Square Club. As president of that local Jewish charity, Mr. Rosen organized a fund-raising luncheon for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, and the proceeds and the award were presented to Dr. King that evening along with a small Torah scroll. Speaking at the dinner in his honor, the famed civil rights leader lauded Jewish contributions to the cause. He praised Jewish civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members during Freedom Summer in 1964 along with their associate James Earl Chaney, an African American man from Mississippi.
 
In his message in the issue of the club’s magazine that preceded their meeting, Mr. Rosen urged his fellow Slipper members to “get involved” in the civil rights cause and take action in the shared struggles at hand. He celebrated Dr. King’s courage and his work by saying that “his leadership in the drive for human rights will prove to be a blessing to all people in our country.” While I spoke with him, I could tell that Mr. Rosen cherishes his memory of his encounter with Dr. King and counts it as one of his proudest moments. I am happy that we are able to display this magazine cover, inscribed to Mr. Rosen by Dr. King that night in 1965, in our lobby in honor of Black History Month this February.  

 

Watching students squirm in their seats and contemplate the world outside our classroom always presented me with a challenge.  The challenge was how to ensure that all my students exited with the skills to learn and acquire more knowledge than when they entered.  One surefire way to gain their interest and enthusiasm was planning and executing a field trip.  Somehow, leaving the confines of the school building and venturing into the great, and frequently unfamiliar beyond, ratcheted up the attention span and curiosity level of my charges.  Amazingly, when off school grounds, even the most challenging student would undergo a mysterious personality change and become pleasant company.  Even the bus ride away from school led to revelatory conversations in which random bits of information about family, food preferences, and spare time activities opened up a fresh perspective about the psyche of the kid who often seemed semi-comatose in class.

Planning and funding the trip was not a task for the faint of heart.  There were a myriad of forms, numerous required signatures, nagging requirements and provisos, and fund raising activities.  Ah the suspense of not knowing whether the bus would be approved, permission slips would be returned with legal signatures, and if the requisite number of chaperones would arrive to allow this much wished for event to occur. 

 

Finally, would all this effort yield the hoped for results?  The ideal scenario for a field trip for my students was a day to stay in motion, explore, get answers to burning questions, eat a good lunch, visit the gift shop and not get yelled at. As for me, I hoped for all of the above plus the rekindling of an enthusiasm for learning.
Now that I am in the role of inviting and welcoming teachers and students to their field trip oasis, I am doubly excited that NMAJH has created a new membership program for teachers.  This Teacher Membership is truly an impactful gift.  It grants teachers unlimited free visits to the Museum, an inside track to Museum news and programs, discounts at the NMAJH store and café, reduced costs for school visits, and access to web content and teacher workshops.  All these supports are available for the introductory tax deductible price of $36 a year.  

 

Teachers have always been high atop my list of heroes, and I hope that this sentiment is shared by many of you.  So, do more than hug a teacher.  Consider increasing their ability to reach all their students with a gift of a Teacher Membership to NMAJH.

To purchase a Teacher Membership, please call 215.923.3811 x 106.  Teacher Memberships will soon be available for purchase online!