Education

Nasso, The Nazirite 
MAY 18, 2013 NASSO
By Rabbi Darby Leigh
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What kind of hair do you have? Do you have long hair, short hair, or no hair at all? If you have hair, what color is it? Is it brown, blonde, white, black, green, red, purple, or something else? What style is your hair? Is it thin, thick, wavy, straight, or curly? Do you have dreadlocks, a mohawk, peyos? Do you show your hair or keep it covered?

To what extent does your hairstyle demonstrate affiliation with a particular social/cultural group, or distinction from a group? How much of your identity is connected with your hair? Put another way, if you were to wake up tomorrow with a radically different hairstyle, how might you feel?

As you look at Jerry Rubin’s book Do It: Scenarios of the Revolution, it is striking to note that one of the things Rubin and so many activists from the 1960s shared was an affinity for wearing long hair. The long hair of the “hippies” encapsulated a rejection of mainstream, normative attitudes about appearance, ideology, and values. Images of people with long hair have become iconic symbols of the 1960s, perhaps best captured in the Broadway play Hair.

In fact one of the most famous lines about hair in the play, “Swing it, flow it, long as God can grow it, my hair,” has roots (pun intended) in this week’s Torah portion. In the book of Numbers, chapter 6, we read of a figure called the Nazirite. A Nazirite could be a man or a woman and was essentially a solitary spiritual seeker, one who took a radical step in dedicating him/herself to developing a closer relationship to God by separating from the community. On this spiritual path, a Nazirite took three vows, including a vow to not cut his/her hair for the duration of being a Nazirite.

Why was growing long hair one of the Nazirite vows? Why was the same act such a powerful statement for young people in the 1960s, thousands of years later? Our hair – or lack of hair – is something that we often take for granted. We are not in control of our hair before it sprouts from our head, and we can only manipulate it once it has appeared. Perhaps a decision to not cut one’s hair signifies an acceptance of things beyond human control and an appreciation of the Energy that makes our hair grow, as well as our hearts beat and our lungs breathe – an appreciation of the Energy in which some may see God.

A life-long “truth seeker,” Rabbi Darby Jared Leigh is a native New Yorker who loves mountains. Rabbi Leigh is a fire-juggling Generation Xer who toured as a leading actor with the Tony award-winning National Theater of the Deaf and has educated others on deafness through his work with organizations such as the New York City Fire Department, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. Rabbi Leigh earned his bachelor of arts in religion, summa cum laude, from the University of Rochester—where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa—and a master of arts in religion from Columbia University before attending the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He currently serves as Associate Rabbi at Congregation Bnai Keshet.

ARTIFACT
DO IT! Scenarios of the Revolution
Jerry Rubin, New York: Ballantine Books, 1970
National Museum of American Jewish History
Located on the second floor in the case in front of the large film screens

The Blessing of Assimilation 
MAY 14, 2013 SHAVUOT
By Rabbi Irwin Kula
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The Jewish festival of Shavuot – the Feast of Weeks – celebrates the encounter between God and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai.

As described in the Biblical book of Exodus the newly freed children of Israel receive the Ten Commandments, establish a covenant with God, and become a holy nation – a distinctive, set apart people, committed to live as a model of justice and righteousness. From that moment at Sinai some three thousand years ago the history of the Jews has been a dialectical journey at times engaging and integrating and at other times distancing and separating from the dominant culture in which they lived. How much to take in of the wisdom and truths of the larger culture and how much to protect one’s own inheritance and traditions from outside influences and ideas? This balancing act of being members of the larger society while maintaining one’s particular identity is no less than the challenge of survival and continuity for any minority in a culture as powerful and compelling as America.

The beautiful prayer shawl for a female cantor created by Renee Goldin Fischman and the magnificently painted tambourine by Betsy Platkin Teutsch depicting women receiving and celebrating the Torah are quintessential products of this tension. Behind the creation of these two innovative religious works of art, which are used in contemporary worship, are countless arguments, divisive debates, and genuine soul searching within and across myriad Jewish communities.

Historically, males exclusively served as cantors and wore the prayer shawl, and the Torah scroll was the province of men – women were prohibited from even touching the scroll. But in the 20th century as women’s rights expanded and feminism was increasingly accepted in the American political and cultural landscape, Jews, like all inheritors of traditional religions, wrestled with whether to embrace these new ideas. Would embracing the “foreign idea” of women’s equality betray or advance Judaism? Would permitting women to partake in previously prohibited rituals dilute or enhance the practice of Judaism? Some Jews worried that assimilating new ideas and practice would undermine Jewish life. But for the majority of American Jews, assimilation offered a means by which traditional Judaism would and could be investing with new strength and meaning.

The unique American experiment of unprecedented religious freedom and pluralism combined with the drive for the new and creative that is so much a part of the American ethos is the ground for a never-ending dance between adapting and resisting that all immigrants and ethnic and religious minorities engage in. Inevitably in this exquisite process there is loss but as these two ritual objects witness there is also the blessing of assimilation.

Rabbi Irwin Kula, the President of Clal, a sought after speaker, and blogger for The Huffington Post and the Washington Post’s “On Faith,” has been a guest on FoxNews.com, NBC’s Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The O’Reilly Factor (Fox), Frontline (PBS), and PoliticsDaily.com, among others. He is a graduate of Columbia University and received his ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. An eighth–generation rabbi, he has headed congregations in St. Louis, MO; Queens, NY; and Jerusalem, Israel and co¬founded the Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living in Chicago.

ARTIFACTS
Shoshanah II, tallit for a woman cantor
Renee Goldin Fischman, 1992
National Museum of American Jewish History
Contemporary Artifacts Purchase Fund
Tambourine
Betsy Platkin Teutsch
National Museum of American Jewish History
Gift of Betsy Teutsch Studio

Letting Go 
MAY 12, 2013  MOTHER"S DAY
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover
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Motherhood is a process of letting go. Our children start as part of us, but from the time they are born they begin to separate, becoming themselves at a rate that can feel agonizingly slow to a mother rocking a screaming baby, but that in retrospect goes far too quickly. For many women—though not all—motherhood feels like a biological imperative. It is wanted.

In the first book of Samuel in the Bible, Hannah wanted a child so badly that she invented a new form of prayer, pleading with God silently and extemporaneously. She promised that if God would allow her a baby boy, she would dedicate him to God’s service, and that is what she did. When her son Samuel was weaned, she gave him up, sending him to serve in the House of God at Shiloh, after which she saw him once a year and brought him new clothing. How astonishing that she would be willing to give up her child, the child she had so longed for!

But this, too, is part of motherhood. Mothers kiss their children and let them go—to daycare, to school, to camp, to college, to their own families, and sometimes to whole new worlds. In Europe, Jewish mothers looking for a better life for their children kissed them and let them go, perhaps never to see them again. In the Museum is a 1940 letter written by Martha and Abraham Frankel to strangers in the United States who were taking in Martha and Abraham’s son, Heinz. Heinz (later Henry) was one of approximately 1,000 unaccompanied children brought to the US by a network of Jewish and Gentile organizations and volunteers through quiet operations designed to avoid backlash from isolationist and antisemitic forces. Children like Heinz were placed in foster homes or with relatives in the hope that they would eventually be reunited with their families. Martha writes, “I must not delay to thank you from the innermost recesses of my heart for your kindness and love which you have shown my child.” She was able to join her son in 1941, but her husband did not manage to leave Europe and died in Riga.

Along the wall of the third floor immigration gallery there is a quote from Marcus Ravage, a young immigrant: “At the moment of departure…[my mother] lost control of her feelings. As she embraced me for the last time her sobs became violent and father had to separate us. There was a despair in her way of clinging to me which I could not understand. I understand it now. I never saw her again.” Children cannot understand until later, perhaps when they are parents themselves, what it means for a mother to say goodbye to her child and let him or her go, whether for a while or forever.
On this Mother’s Day, we honor the love mothers have for their children: the love that moves them to bring those children into the world, to hold on to them tight, and to do whatever it takes to get them a better life, even when it means letting go of them forever.

Rabbi Heidi Hoover, of Temple Beth Emeth in Brooklyn, NY, is a proud alumna of the Academy for Jewish Religion and Gratz College; she received smicha (ordination) and her Master’s degree in Jewish Studies in May of 2011. Her undergraduate degree is from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA.

ARTIFACT
Trunk, 1941
National Museum of American Jewish History
This trunk once belonged to Martha Frankel. It was brought to the United States by Martha’s brother, Arthur Einstein, and his family when they escaped Europe in 1941 aboard the SS Navemor. Mrs. Frankel traveled to America separately, reuniting with her son Heinz when she arrived.

A Community of Individuals 
MAY 11, 2013 BAMIDBAR
By Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder Ph D
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On the large wall on the 2nd floor as you cross the atrium there is an astonishing array of photos. Older people and young people, the famous and the unknown, men and women, converts and Jews from birth, people of all races, people of a variety of professions. Already on our journey though the history of American Jews, we are compelled to stop here and take notice. We are reminded that there are real people involved in the narratives of history.

It is a visual accounting of a community. The abstract concept of ‘a people’ is made concrete, and in doing so it is vibrant, challenging, familiar, and engaging. We look at these faces and we know who makes up this community.

There is a similar accounting of tribes in this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar. Bamidbar means in the desert and this week’s portion comes as the people of Israel are wandering through the desert. Wandering can seem aimless and hopeless if one does not stop and notice the community that surrounds us. One might wonder if any individual is of particular import in a large community. The bible lists the names of the tribal leaders and then goes on to detail the members, name by name and by the numbers too. Place also mattered, every person had a name and a tribe, and every tribe was located in relation to the holy center. This was not an undefined mass. The community was ordered and in that order it was defined. This accounting was a reminder of the importance of each individual, that each male (the women were not included) member mattered. Not only were they seen by God, but they needed to be seen by each other as well.

Heading to High Holiday services in 1951, Mrs. Amelia Loeb of Temple Israel in Lawrence, New York, knew she mattered as well. For the most attended services of the year, the synagogue adhered to the common practice of handing out tickets to assure seating. Unlike their foremothers, Mrs. Amelia Loeb and the other women of the congregation were counted. She was identified by name. Loeb had her own ticket, with her own name, not that of her husband. She was a seat holder, guaranteed a place in the mass gathering. Likely as not, she and other members took the same seat year after year, so that like the tribes of Israel they could identify individuals by location as well as name. Like the other members of the community, she was important as an individual as well as part of the larger group.

Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder PhD. is the Rabbi-in-Residence at Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), an organization advocating for ethnic and cultural diversity in the global Jewish community. A graduate of Barnard College holding a doctorate from Yale University, Rabbi Ruth is the editor of Tzeh U’llimad: A Blog of Jewish Learning.

ARTIFACT
Ticket for High Holiday services at Temple Israel, Lawrence, New York, 1951
National Museum of American Jewish History
Peter H. Schweitzer Collection of Jewish Americana

Ring in Freedom 
MAY 4, 2013 BEHAR-BECHUKOTAI
By Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard
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The American Liberty Bell bears this inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” [Leviticus 25:10]. The United States stands for human freedom. Liberty means the freedom for each individual to choose how he or she would live life and pursue happiness. The American people have no master besides themselves.

The verse inscribed on the Liberty Bell is found in parshat Behar: “.…and you shall treat as kadosh [hallow/consecrate/set apart] the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim deror [release/liberty/freedom] throughout the land for [or ‘unto’] all its inhabitants.”
Every seven years a shemitah ,or year of rest, for the land was declared; harvested produce was shared and debts forgiven. Every seven cycles came a Yovel, a Jubilee, when most land returned to its original owners and all Hebrew slaves, or more accurately, all indentured servants, were released.

A servant/slave has a master. Although Jewish masters were required to treat their indentured servants well, as masters they retained decision-making power. As long as the work itself was not degrading, the servant had to work when, where, and how the master ordered. He was subject to the master’s will; he had no significant agency of his own. Liberation meant a return to personal agency and choice, being free to actively make and carry out plans that would lead to the satisfaction of one’s own desires, goals, and purposes.
Jewish immigrants to America sought liberation. They sought to be released from the European social and economic constraints created by poverty and prejudice. They looked forward to becoming their own masters. For many, the royal road to liberation was education. It meant acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to think for oneself, to choose what one really believed was valuable, and to successfully formulate and implement one’s own plans.

In 1913 Eva Baen left her parents in Russia and immigrated to America at age seventeen in search of an education. She actively pursued her dream by taking night classes at Kearney and later, Jefferson Evening Elementary Schools in Philadelphia, while working at a shirtwaist factory during the day. Her attendance card from Kearney is one of many she received as she advanced through night school. Eva Baen took the first step towards her own liberation by choosing to leave Russia and, in committing herself to educational pursuits, turned that dream into a reality.

Our verse from parashat Behar calls us to create a society in which we regularly reclaim our capacity to be our own masters—to free ourselves from incapacitating fears, illusions and distortions. Eva Baen’s card reminds us that education in its widest sense is an important part of that liberation.

Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard is the Director of Organizational Development at Clal, an ordained Orthodox rabbi, and a practicing clinical and organizational psycologist in New York, holding PhDs in Psychology and Philosophy. Rabbi Blanchard has taught at Washington, Northwestern, and Loyola Universities, as well as the Drisha Institute for Women, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Wexner Heritage Foundation, and Fordham Law School. A guest of both Oprah Winfrey and Pope Benedict XVI, Rabbi Blanchard continues to be an active voice for Clal’s mission of religious pluralism and diversity, as a participant of the Center for Christian–Jewish Understanding. 

ARTIFACT
Attendance card of Eva Baen, Philadelphia, 1914-1915
National Museum of American Jewish History
Gift of Clara K. Braslow in memory of her parents

Home for the Holidays? 
APRIL 26, 2013 EMOR
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover
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Holidays anchor us: to family, to home, to memory. They remind us of who we are and where we come from, providing an element of constancy even when other parts of our life change. Emor, which means “speak,” is a section of the Hebrew Bible from the book of Leviticus. It includes a list of when the Israelites, and subsequently, the Jews, were to celebrate the holidays throughout the year. In the centuries since the Bible was written, the Jewish holidays have been celebrated at these same dates on the Hebrew calendar, in different lands, in different ways, through the generations. Among the holidays listed in the Torah portion is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which has found its own expression in the United States.

The Museum’s collection includes Rosh Hashanah pop-up cards depicting Miss Columbia (later replaced with imagery of Lady Liberty) opening the gate to new immigrants. They were sent by immigrants in the US to family members still living in Europe.

What were the thoughts and feelings of a new immigrant sending these cards? Perhaps the approach of the holiday causes a stab of longing for home as she thinks of preparing a festive Rosh Hashanah meal with her mother, with whom she knows she will never share the holiday again.

For another immigrant, perhaps America did not turn out to be as he had hoped, he is struggling. The Rosh Hashanah card is an act of bravado, communicating, “No, this was the right decision, and I’m doing great.”

For still another, reveling in the freedom of the United States, feeling safe and invigorated by opportunity, the message was, “Let’s be together again for the holidays, but let’s do it here, in this exciting land!”

As we get older, our experience of holidays deepens and becomes more complicated as each year’s celebration adds a layer to the meaning of the day. Places at the table that were once full become empty, or we find ourselves in a completely different place, seeing simultaneously where we are and where we were in past years, on that day. Holidays anchor us and remind us of who we are, even when everything else has changed.

Rabbi Heidi Hoover, of Temple Beth Emeth in Brooklyn, NY, is a proud alumna of the Academy for Jewish Religion and Gratz College; she received smicha (ordination) and her Master’s degree in Jewish Studies in May of 2011. Her undergraduate degree is from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA.

ARTIFACT
Rosh Hashanah card segment, 1909
Hebrew Publishing Co.
National Museum of American Jewish History
Gift of Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett
The Hebrew at the bottom of the card translates to “Open the gates of righteousness for me” on the right from Psalm 118:19 and “The gates opened for the new righteous to enter” on the left.

Promise of a New Start
APRIL 20, 2013 ACHREI MOT-KEDOSHIM
By Rabbi Yonah Berman
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For millions of immigrants and would-be immigrants around the world, America has long been synonymous with words like Freedom, Opportunity and Liberty. One can only imagine the elation felt by numerous of soon-to-be new Americans, as they were greeted by welcoming eyes of the Statue of Liberty as they sailed into New York Harbor. Arriving from every corner of the globe, men, women and children saw – and continue to see – the potential to build a better life for themselves and their families in the United States. To those escaping lives of ethnic, economic and religious oppression, Lady Liberty has long symbolized cornerstone values on which this country is built, themselves expressed thousands of years ago in the Bible and read in this week’s Torah portion: “You shall not defraud your fellow. You shall not commit robbery.... You shall not insult the deaf, or place a stumbling block before the blind.... You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kinsman fairly.” [Leviticus 19:13-15]

This creed was eloquently paralleled by the Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), in words now found on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (The New Colossus, 1883)

Emma Lazarus, a descendant of one of the first Jewish families in America, grew up in New York City, where she witnessed the arrival of countless new Americans. She spent time assisting Russian Jewish immigrants, an experience that influenced her advocacy work with the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society and her writing. She wrote The New Colossus in 1883 to raise money for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. Sixteen years after her death, the final lines of the poem were affixed to Lady Liberty’s pedestal, helping to turn the Statue into a symbol of welcoming to new immigrants.

As you stand here, imagine what it must have felt like to arrive in the New World; to have finally escaped from the Old World and its endless difficulties and to see, in America, a land of boundless potential.

Rabbi Yonah Berman is the Rabbi of Kadimah- Toras Moshe in Brighton, MA. He also teaches at the Jewish Community Day School in Boston. Rabbi Berman attended Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. Before college he studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel and then received his BA in Psychology from Yeshiva University. After graduation, he returned to Israel and served in the IDF in a front-line tank unit, where he was awarded for his performance during training.

ARTIFACT
Manuscript, The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus
Private Collection
Unauthorized use or duplication is forbidden

You can also find an image of Emma Lazarus in the family tree in our Establishing Communities gallery.

Comfort in a Time of Need 
April 20, 2013 AHAREI MOT-KEDOSHIM
By Rabbi Richard Hirsh
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How do we memorialize those who have died? How does a culture, a nation, a people create meaning out of loss and sanctification out of sacrifice? When are we served by silence, and when are we moved to speak?

The Torah portion Aharei Mot (“After the death…”) picks up a narrative that began in Leviticus 10 which recounts how the two sons of Aaron, the High Priest and Moses’ brother, perished upon trying to enter the Kadosh Kodashim, the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the Sanctuary. Though the Sanctuary was a temporary construction while the Israelites’ were in the desert, entrance into this chamber was restricted to only the High Priest once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Upon learning of his sons’ death the Torah tells us only: “and Aaron was silent” [Leviticus 10:3].

But death and loss, whether individual or communal, more often calls forth speech, not silence. And in the context of war, the words spoken take on a special urgency as well as poignancy.

Throughout the Museum we find reference to rabbis serving as chaplains in the military. Although Jews served in the army beginning with the Revolutionary War, the first Jewish chaplains were commissioned and served during the Civil War. Starting in 1917, the Jewish Welfare Board became responsible for enlisting Jewish chaplains and meeting the religious needs of Jewish soldiers stationed without a chaplain. The JWB published prayer books, Jewish calendars, and song books for solders, arranged for kosher food, and organized recreational activities for soldiers stationed at home and abroad.

Rabbinic chaplains brought the comfort of familiar rituals to Jewish soldiers with the words of liturgy and prayer. Sabbath services with candles and familiar melodies, Passover seders with matzah and haggadahs, and High Holiday shofar blowings helped to overcome the inevitable loneliness of holidays spent far from family and home.

As military chaplains are called upon to do, these clergymen were serving soldiers of all faiths and of none – ministering, consoling and praying, using words to bring comfort and wrest meaning from the brutality of war. Chaplains often had the sad task of writing to families to tell them of the death of their loved ones.

The Torah story of the silence of Aaron appears thus to be the exception, not the rule. Death and loss, especially as a consequence of service to the nation, calls for words of memorialization and prayer. Throughout the Museum, we see the stories of chaplains who, like their biblical ancestors, sought to make meaning. The words they spoke sanctified the lives of those whose personal stories are knit together with living in, and sometimes dying for, this new homeland that promised freedom such as Jews had never known.

Rabbi Richard Hirsh is the Executive Director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and teaches at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He currently serves as co-chair of the Clergy Task Force on Domestic Violence of JWI (Jewish Women International), on the editorial board of Sh’ma magazine, and on the boards of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia, the Religious Leaders Council of Greater Philadelphia, and the National Council of Synagogues.

ARTIFACT
Songs for Soldiers and Sailors
New York: Jewish Welfare Board, 1918
National Museum of American Jewish History


Visit the Museum blog to learn more about Jewish soldiers’ Passover experiences during World War II.

Who’s the Patient Here?
April 13, 2013 TAZRIA–METZORA
By Rabbi Helaine Ettinger
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Houses, just like people, fall ill according to the Book of Leviticus. This particular chapter includes a story of houses in which “plague breaks out” (Lev 14:43). What kind of strange phenomenon is this? Scientifically, it could be a mold or rot that spreads over the stones and mortar. Jewish commentators through the centuries have seen this “plague” as a sickness of the soul, a metaphor for the spiritual health of those living in it. The 16th century biblical commentator, Rabbi Moshe Alshich interpreted the infection of the house as a warning to society. The infection of stones and mortar were the physical symptoms of the need to redress moral misconduct in society.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the United States faced a mortal challenge, a war that threatened to rupture the nation. Throughout the conflict, Abraham Lincoln often referenced the bible in his speeches and writings, using the analogy of an “ailing house” as the basis for one of his most famous speeches:

“ ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.“
– Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858

Moral disease, as surely as bodily disease, worsens and spreads throughout a society if left unchecked. Lincoln saw slavery as a sickness in the soul of our nation. He expressed his uneasiness by comparing his beloved country to a house too weak to stand.

In a poignant and personal account, A Woman’s War Record, Septima M. Levy Collis described the pain of living through the Civil War in a household that was literally divided. Her book is on display in the Museum’s Civil War gallery. Charleston-born Septima Levy, the young bride of Union General Charles H. T. Collis had friends and family fighting on both sides of the conflict. “I never fully realized the fratricidal character of the conflict until I lost my idolized brother Dave of the Southern army one day, and was nursing my Northern husband back to life the next.” She noted both the destruction brought by the war and the first signs of healing. Recalling a time when she and her husband were stationed in Virginia, she noted:

“City Point became one vast hospital for suffering humanity. As far as the eye could reach… the plain was dotted with tents which were rapidly filled with wounded men, Northern and Southern, white and black without distinction.”

The scars of the Civil War remained part of American society for generations, and continue to figure prominently in our politics and culture. An ailing society slowly heals, as Levy Collis wrote, war “cost the lives of many dear ones, but this was the only loss. We are to-day one people – we might have been a dozen.” Our biblical ancestors would be pleased to know that we heeded their warning.

Rabbi Helaine Ettinger is a Reform Rabbi serving the Jewish Congregation of Kinnelon in New Jersey. Co-President of the Women’s Rabbinic Network she is also a fellow with Rabbis Without Borders and a founding member of the collaborative adult educational program, Rimon.






ARTIFACT
A Woman’s War Record, 1861-1865
Septima Maria Levy Collis, New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1897
National Museum of American Jewish History
Dedicated in honor of Lyn and George Ross by Gwen and Alan Goodman 

Food Matters  
April 6, 2013 SHIMINI
By Rabbi Brad Hirschfield
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“You are what you eat,” we often hear, but is that really true? Perhaps not entirely so, as demonstrated by the fact that most Americans are not walking burgers or slices of pizza. But there is, however, much wisdom to be found in appreciating the connection between what’s on our plates and what’s in our hearts.

Simply put, we eat our values. From biblical times to the present, and many times in between, as you experience in the halls of NMAJH, the connection between what we eat and the values we most deeply cherish, can be seen time and time again.

From a piece of fruit in the Garden of Eden, to the code of permitted and prohibited animals found in Leviticus 11:1-47, the Hebrew Bible makes it clear: food matters. The food choices we make reflect who we are and who we hope to be.

For the ancient Israelites, and still central to traditional kosher laws today, that meant a code instructing people to eat in a way reminiscent of how the world was created in the Genesis story – land, sea, and sky creatures each distinct from the other – and each meal a reminder that humans, like God, are creators with the power to bring order and meaning to life.

What was true then has remained true through the ages. It’s why a simple frying pan used to prepare blintzes would be preserved through the generations – evoking not only the memory of cheese-filled crepes, but of the nurturing presence of the one who prepared and served them.

And as the iconic rye bread ads of a generation back reminded us, “you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.” Meaning, among other things, the power of food to convey profound messages, knows no boundaries. A “Jewish food” can belong to anyone able to appreciate its qualities, just as other foods can become “Jewish foods” as they become a part of how Jews live their lives and celebrate their story.

Perhaps Franz Rosenzweig said it best when teaching that some day, a grandmother’s recipe for gefilte fish will be passed down with the same sense of tradition as formal commandments or customs. Why? Because at the end of the day, even if we are not defined entirely by what we eat, the foods we eat help us define who we are and who we hope to be.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, President of CLAL, has been ranked several years in a row in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis,” and recognized as one of our nation’s top “Preachers & Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com.

ARTIFACTS
Poster, Levy’s Rye Bread, ca. 1975 
National Museum of American Jewish History
Peter H. Schweitzer Collection of Jewish Americana
The Levy’s ad campaign created by the Doyle Dane Bernbach, Inc. agency
featured people of various nationalities enjoying a stereotypically Jewish bread.

Frying pan of Sarah Leavitt, Medford, Massachusetts, ca. 1910 
National Museum of American Jewish History
Gift of Pauline Levitsky in memory of her parents Benjamin and Sarah Leavitt
Sarah Leavitt used this frying pan, made by her husband, to cook blintzes.

What is Your Food Worth? is a two-year long conversation about food, ethics, sustainability, and eating Jewish, presented by Temple University’s Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, in partnership with the Gershman Y, the National Museum of American Jewish History, and Congregation Rodeph Shalom. Learn more at http://whatisyourfoodworth.com

Let My People Go 

March 25, 2013 PASSOVER

By Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu
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“When Israel was in Egypt’s land: Let my people go… Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go.”

Many Americans know this song as an African American spiritual, sung by slaves. It is a play on the biblical verses in the Exodus story of the Israelites leaving Egypt. For many American Jews, the song is traditionally sung at the Passover Seder.

“Let my people go” was also a rallying cry for the Soviet Jewry Movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. During this period, American Jews organized protests and worked tirelessly to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave. The Soviet regime forbade Jews from practicing their religion or customs,and often resorted to persecution and intimidation. What started as a grassroots student movement in 1964 soon took off as a national cause. By the 1970s the National Conference on Soviet Jewry worked to unify the many local and national organizations to better coordinate the Jewish community’s response. Protests and marches were held by Jews in cities across America. The personal stories of refuseniks (the name given to Jews who were refused visas to leave) shared at rallies and twinning programs that paired bar and bat mitzvah aged teens with Soviet Jewish teens made the issue personal and real for American Jews.

Many Philadelphians played a prominent role in the movement. Visitors to the core exhibition can see artifacts from individuals like Gwen Goodman, who went on trips to the Soviet Union to meet with Jews and to learn more about the situation. One such trip inspired Constance and Joseph Smukler to take a leading role in advocating for the release of refuseniks by speaking at synagogues and conferences, clandestine travel to the Soviet Union and by meeting with US officials.

The movement peaked on Freedom Sunday in December 1987 when nearly 250,000 people from across the nation gathered on the National Mall to protest on behalf of Soviet Jews. The march coincided with President Reagan‘s meeting with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Within a few years, Gorbachev opened the gates, and hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews immigrated to Israel and America.

Passover, with its theme of freedom is, not surprisingly, the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday in America. Many immigrant groups, including Jews, came to these shores to escape persecution. The slogan, “Let my People go!” crosses religious, racial, and socio-economic lines like no other. What better way to celebrate Passover in America then to continue to advocate on behalf of others, at home and abroad, and continue to speak out in favor of religious freedom. 

Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu is the Director of Rabbis Without Borders at Clal—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College, and holds a masters degree and ordination from The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. 

ARTIFACT
Poster, Let My People Go, 1969
Illustrated by Dan Reisinger
National Museum of American Jewish History
Peter H. Schweitzer Collection of Jewish Americana
Dan Reisinger (b. 1934) is an Israeli artist and graphic designer. Born in Yugoslavia, he survived the Holocaust hiding with a Serbian family. Reisinger’s Let My People Go is one of the first examples of his politically themed work. 

Find Yourself in Every Generation

By Rabbi Brad Hirschfield

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What does it mean to be free? There are as many good answers as there are people who choose to answer the question, and none is more important than yours. As you enter the National Museum of American Jewish History you have the opportunity to answer that question for yourself while being inspired by two of the greatest freedom stories ever told.

What does it mean to build a nation which puts freedom and human dignity at the center of everything it does? That is the fundamental question which animated both the founding of this nation and of the Jewish people, and you need not be Jewish or even American, to appreciate the answers, especially as they have come together in the unfolding of American Jewish History. It’s a story that belongs to all people who enter this institution, not to mention that the idea that the story belongs to all of us, is as old as the exodus from Egypt recorded in the Hebrew Bible.

Each year, in a thousands year old tradition, as family and friends gather at the table to celebrate Passover and the first steps taken into freedom by those leaving bondage, people are invited to see themselves as if that journey is their own—that they themselves are slaves leaving Egypt. But is that possible? Can we really see ourselves as “those people”? We can when we realize that “they” are us.

We all want to be free, and we all have tight spots—the literal translation of the Hebrew word for Egypt—from which we want to escape. We all want to feel liberated to be the people we are meant to be—to see our dreams become reality, and our greatest aspirations for ourselves, our families, our nation and the world fulfilled.

As you wander these halls, see the ongoing story of making dreams come true, behold the daring of leaders who led the way, the bravery of those who persevered in the face of the challenges that inevitably arose, and the beauty of everyday people as they lived their lives in pursuit of freedom, dignity, success and happiness. They are us—wherever we are from, whatever our faith, ethnicity, or pretty much anything else. They are you.

Find yourself in the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, President of CLAL, has been ranked several years in a row in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis,” and recognized as one of our nation’s top “Preachers & Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com.

About Sacred Stories

Both the Jewish People and the United States of America are rooted in a quest for greater freedom and human dignity. Inspired by this parallelism, the National Museum of American Jewish History is collaborating with Clal—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and its Rabbis without Borders program to launch a new initiative, Sacred Stories: A Living Commentary on the Hebrew Bible and American Jewish History.

Sacred Stories weaves together Judaism’s foundational sacred text, the Torah, with one of the most successful expression of freedom in human history, the story of Jewish life in America. Sacred Stories explores our shared values by linking these two vital and compelling stories through contemporary commentary and 21st century media.

The Torah is a central feature of Jewish tradition. Used to refer generally to Jewish wisdom, it also refers specifically to the 5 Books of Moses which makes up the Hebrew Bible. A portion of the Torah text, a Parsha, is read on Shabbat (Sabbath). The whole Torah is read sequentially over the course of the year. Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest and begins on Friday evenings and ends Saturday night. Many Jews observe Shabbat to emulate God’s resting on the seventh day of Creation. The fourth commandment is to keep Shabbat holy which Jews do with festive meals, resting, and learning.