Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 20, 2021

This article is part of our latest Fine Arts & Exhibits special report, about how art institutions are helping audiences discover new options for the future.

NEW ORLEANS Some of the artifacts may seem mundane for display in a museum: a steamer trunk, a peddlers cart, a cash register from a mens clothing store.

But they reflect the little-known 350-year history of Jews in Americas Southern states, which is the focus of the new $5.5 million Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience here.

This all about how Jews came to the South, where they might have experienced a difficult welcome and where they succeeded at building loving relationships with their largely Christian neighbors, said Jay Tanenbaum, an Atlanta-based investment banker and the chairman of the museums board. Its about toleration and acceptance.

Kenneth Hoffman, the museums executive director, said the Southern immigrants had very different experiences from their Northern counterparts.

Were excited to tell our story to non-Jewish people and to Jews who dont know Southern Jewish history, said Mr. Hoffman, a Tulane-trained historian. Ours is a universal story about how people navigate whatever environment they find themselves in.

Though a small minority, Jews played a key role in the economic development of the South, creating businesses and shops in hundreds of rural towns. Today, many of their descendants have moved to large urban centers like New Orleans and Atlanta, with many involved with the arts, philanthropy and civic life.

As newcomers to America, theirs was not the Ellis Island and Lower East Side narrative usually associated with the migration saga. Some came to the South as early as Colonial times and later from Germany, France and Eastern Europe. Instead of working in sweatshops and living in crowded urban ghettos, the newcomers frequently moved to the frontier, supporting themselves as itinerant peddlers.

In the loneliness of the rural South, the vendors were welcomed for much needed goods and news. Some settled into hospitable communities and established shops or bought land, something that had often been prohibited in the old country. Often, they would be the only Jews in the region.

Today, Jews represent less than 1 percent of the Souths population, Mr. Hoffman said.

The museums first gallery, From Immigrants to Southerners, tells the settlement story. Front and center is the steamer trunk that Rachmeil Shapiro brought with him in 1905 as he journeyed from Russia to Germany to Galveston, Texas.

Nearby, is a peddlers cart, filled with typical merchandise bolts of cloth, pots, tools, childrens toys.

Next to it is a composite recreation of a small-town retail shop at the turn of the last century. The clock once hung at Rosenzweigs in Lake Village, Ark. The hat press comes from Flowers Brothers in Lexington, Miss. There is an elaborate gilded cash register from Galantys Mens Wear in Lake Providence, La.

But the Southern Jewish story also has a dark side. While some Jews stood with abolitionists, others were slaveholders. In a gallery centered on the antebellum period and the Civil War, there is a bill of sale for a 12-year-old named Harriet, a slave for life, sold for $1,000 to an Arkansas woman named Clara Wiseberg. The transaction was witnessed by E.E. Levy.

A large mural shows a photograph of the 19th century abolitionist Rabbi Max Lillienthal. Superimposed over his image is an 1861 screed by Jacob Cohen of New Orleans, denouncing the rabbis antislavery stance.

Mr. Cohen would die wearing Confederate gray at the second Battle of Bull Run.

One visitor to the museum, Michael Brown, an African-American from Berkeley, Calif., said he was taken with the way the museum is willing to talk about the conflict that comes up for all humans the challenge of empathy.

He added, I like how they show how Southern Jews played both a progressive and regressive role.

Creating a new institution addressing controversial topics wasnt easy. An earlier version of the museum had been established at a camp in Utica, Miss., and sponsored by a Jewish communal organization, the Institute for Southern Jewish Life.

The Utica museum held 4,000 documents, photographs, letters and religious objects. Though the collection was of interest to scholars, it didnt draw many visitors. In 2012, the materials went into storage.

At the time, Mr. Tanenbaum, whose great-grandfather settled in Dumas, Ark., was chairman of the institutes board. He said he saw the need for the museum to continue, though in different form and different place.

Though he had little professional museum experience, Mr. Tanenbaum assembled a team that included the philanthropists Morris Mintz, whose family were liquor distributors in Louisiana, and Russell Palmer, a real estate investor. Together, they raised almost $9 million enough to jump-start a new institution.

Gallagher & Associates, the museum planning and design firm, prepared a feasibility study. The firm was later hired as the lead designers of the museum.

This was always going to be a best museum practices venue, Mr. Hoffman said. It was never going to be like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Hey kids, lets put on a show.

The next task was finding the right location. A planning committee considered Atlanta, Little Rock and Memphis. New Orleans was selected, according to the museums website, because it was a city with a vibrant Jewish population, one with a healthy tourism economy, and one that did not already have a Jewish-themed museum or other cultural attraction. The museum is in the Arts-Warehouse District.

Once planning was underway, Anna Tucker, a curator at Kennesaw State University, was hired as curator. She began by rummaging through the Utica collection.

It was daunting to go through the boxes, she recalled. People have asked me how is it possible to cram 350 years of history into 13,000 square feet of museum space? The answer is: theres no way. All we can do is start conversations.

One problem was that artifacts had been collected rather randomly. The new museum was to have a narrative based on defined themes: immigration, the Civil War, religious practices and the civil rights movement. Ms. Tucker needed objects supporting specific exhibits.

She decided to reach out to the Jewish community. The gambit proved fruitful, particularly for finding original materials from more recent events.

For the World War II and Holocaust installation, Susan Phillips Good and Rose Marie Phillips Wagman sent the 1936 diary written by their mother, Elsa Hamburger Phillips. The journal, now on display, details how 13-year-old Ilsa Hamburger escaped Nazi Germany and settled with relatives in McGehee, Ark.

Next to it is a German language Haggadah, the Passover prayer book. It belonged to Ernest Marx, who was studying for his bar mitzvah when he was swept up in Kristallnacht, the first of a series of harrowing episodes he endured during World War II. After the war he settled in Louisville, Ky. Judith Bradley, his stepdaughter, sent the prayer book to the museum.

For the Civil Rights and Activism gallery, Stephen Krause, a Californian, offered a series of oral history recordings that his father, Rabbi P. Allen Krause, made in 1966 for his seminary graduate thesis. Rabbi Krause interviewed 13 Southern rabbis about their congregations response to the civil rights movement. Visitors to this exhibit can listen to portions of the interviews.

Launching a new museum in the midst of a pandemic has presented challenges. A shortage of raw materials delayed exhibit construction. Fund-raising was hindered because some potential donors wouldnt travel.

A formal opening scheduled for October 2020 was canceled because of Covid. Instead, the museum opened quietly in May.

A second attempt at a public launch was scheduled for early October with a formal dinner for donors and a street fair. But with the resurgence of the virus in Louisiana, it has been postponed until spring. Then came Hurricane Ida. Backup generators saved the collection, but the museum had to shut down for two weeks.

With a projected annual operating budget of $1.1 million, the museum hopes to attract 30,000 visitors a year.

We want to expand peoples understanding of what it means to be a Southerner, a Jew and ultimately an American, Mr. Hoffman said. This is an American story. We think everybody can learn something about our great nation by exploring our experience.

Read more here:

A Museum in New Orleans Tells the Story of Jews in the South - The New York Times

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