Jewish Museum and Heritage Studies

Museum and exhibition practices have played significant functions in Jewish intellectual and cultural life for generations. Central theoretical and practical debates in the field include:

  • What are the principal functions of Jewish-sponsored museum projects? To celebrate Jewish identity and strengthen intra-Jewish solidarity? To combat anti-Semitism? To provoke challenging forms of self-examination and dialogue among Jews and non-Jews?
  • In museum representations, how much relative emphasis should be assigned to various formulations and threads of Jewish historical experience, including textual and exegetical traditions, liturgical practice, collective experiences of pain and suffering, political and economic achievement and changing practices of everyday life, including clothing, foodways, vernacular language, women’s subcultures and patterns of quotidian social interaction?
  • To what extent should iconoclastic concerns over images, especially images of persons and human bodies, in traditionalist Jewish thought inform display projects?
  • Under what circumstances and through which exhibition strategies may sacred or ritual objects, including the Torah, legitimately be displayed in museum contexts?
  • How much centrality should be assigned to the Holocaust/Shoah in representations of Jewish historical experience, within the United States and globally?
  • In depictions of anti-Jewish atrocities and traumatic historical events, how to balance the need to educate the public with respect for the rights and sensitivities of survivors and bereaved persons? How to illustrate and evoke pain and suffering without reducing the oppressed to the status of entirely abject victims lacking historical agency?
  • To what extent should museum projects emphasize the historical uniqueness of Jewish experience of oppression, especially the Holocaust or Shoah? To what extent should representations of the Holocaust be located within more universal explorations of inhumanity and atrocities in the past and present?
  • To what extent should the establishment and development of the state of Israel be depicted as the telos of Jewish historical experience?
  • What responsibilities do Jewish-sponsored museum projects have to foster dialogue with other communities? To what extent should such institutions include voices and perspectives from, for example, Muslim, Christian, Afro-American, Arab and Palestinian interlocutors?

Specialist and Resource Persons

  • Mark Auslander (Anthropology)
  • Sylvia Barack Fishman (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
  • Anton Polonsky (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
  • Sharon Pucker Rivo (National Center for Jewish Film)
  • Jonathan Sarna  (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
  • Ellen Smith (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Related Courses at Brandeis

  • Art, Artifacts and History: The Material Culture of Modern Jews (NEJS 133a)
  • Museums and Public Memory (ANTH 159a)
  • Coexistence, Cultural Work and the Arts (COEX 250a)
  • In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Global Encounters (GECS 160a)
  • Film and the Holocaust (NEJS 181b)
  • History and Memory in the Middle East (NEJS 291a )
  • Describing Cruelty (NEJS 190a)

Related Online Resources

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, D.C.)
http://www.ushmm.org/

The National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia)
http://www.nmajh.org/

The Jewish Museum (New York)
http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/

 The National Museum of American Jewish Military History (Washington, D.C.)
http://www.nmajmh.org/

Yad Vashem (Jerusalem)
http://www.yadvashem.org

 From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-overview.html

 Triangle Factory Fire
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/narrative1.html