With attendance figures stagnant, Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History should change its name, retool its mission, and target broader audiences. That’s the message in a prickly editorial from Liberty City Press, an independent news service whose publisher boasts personal ties to the museum’s founders. Headlined “History Museums Sucking Wind on Independence Mall,” the…
We’re two weeks from Halloween folks, which means while the rest of the country is already in the full swing Christmas kitsch, we of the tribal persuasion get to celebrate something much more special this year. And why shouldn’t we go all out? It’s going to be another 70,000 years, or approximately 2,800 generations, before…
“The Emigrants” a circa-1930 oil painting by Julius Bloch, is the signature image in a new exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, “Jewish Artists in America 1925-1945.” “It conveys the experience of immigrants, one that is intimately and deeply tied to this museum,” said Josh Perelman, NMAJH’s chief curator and…
George Washington’s iconic letter written to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790 is finally on public display after a decade in the shadows. The timing of its emergence as the centerpiece of a new exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia is exquisite. But then, it was bound to…
Imagine a country where Jews are prevented from serving as lawyers, where men must swear on the New Testament to enter public office and where people are denied the vote because of their faith. Welcome to America during the late 1700s, when a republic was forged in the heat of revolutionary ideas such as liberty…
Legendary drummer Max Weinberg, one of the original members of the E Street Band, took a night off from Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” concert tour on March 27 to talk about his life and lessons learned at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Weinberg improbably started a second career at the age…
Ivy L. Barsky is changing museums, cities and American Jewish culture. As deputy director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, located on Battery Place in Lower Manhattan, Barsky worked to convey the Jewish experience through the stories of survivors. Now, as she becomes the director and chief operating…
“Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague” (1966). Sepia and ink drawing by Shirley Moskowitz. Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments It is hard for me to accept that it has been four years this weekend since my mother, artist Shirley Moskowitz, died in Santa Monica, Calif., at the age of 86. I’ve written about some…
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