Španělská synagoga: rekonstrukce a nová stálá expozice Židé v českých zemích v 19. a 20. století

The Jewish Museum in Prague, one of the oldest public Judaic collections since 1906, has opened the new permanent exhibition Jews in the Bohemian Lands, 19th-20th Centuries in the Spanish Synagogue. After a year and half-long reconstruction, the exhibition features the Jewish history in the Bohemian lands, with the help of priceless original objects as well as the use of digital technology. The exhibition has been awarded the Gloria Musaealis 2020 Special Prize in the Museum Project category.

The spectre of the thing: The construction of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust memorial

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial is situated on the western side of Green Park in Darlinghurst, in Sydney, Australia. Darlinghurst is considered the heart of Sydney's gay and lesbian population, having been the site of demonstrations, public meetings, Gay Fair Days, and the starting point for the AIDS Memorial Candlelight Rally. It is also very close to both the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Jewish War Memorial. The planning and construction of the Memorial between 1991 and 2001 was a process framed by two competing imperatives. Balancing the commemoration of a subset of victims of the Holocaust with a positioning of the event as a universal symbol of the continuing persecution of gays and lesbians was a challenge that came to define the ten year struggle to have the memorial built.

The Sydney Jewish Museum and the Religious Studies Project with Breann Fallon

Pursuing a degree in religious studies sometimes seems to lead only to an academic position. Ph.D. candidate Breann Fallon suggests otherwise. Drawing upon her work as a Co-Editor of the Religious Studies Project and the Sydney Jewish Museum’s Educational Team, Fallon shows that there are possibilities and opportunities. Fallon candidly tells her story and how she marshaled her academic training to pursue passion projects in the broader educational economy.

Exhibiting Galicia: Problems of Interpretation and Other Reflections on the Permanent Exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków

The purpose of this article is to offer a critical comment on the permanent exhibition of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków. The exhibition is innovative in museological terms. It is not about the Jewish history of Galicia, nor is it arranged using conventional chronology, nor is it comprehensive. Rather it is divided into five sections, based on a five-part set of ideas, simple ideas intended to help visitors make sense of the complex realities surrounding the present-day situation of the Jewish heritage seventy-five years after the Holocaust. Let me now briefly outline how these five ideas are represented museologically, the five sections in which the exhibition is organized. The opening section directly presents the popular Jewish stereotype that post-Holocaust Poland is nothing but a vast Jewish graveyard. So this section of the exhibition consists entirely of the raw, shocking sight of desolation – for example, photos of ruined synagogues or ruined Jewish cemeteries. The 23 photos on show in this section include the appalling condition of the synagogue in Stary Dzików (a small town near the Ukrainian border) as it looked in the 1990s and of the devastated Jewish cemetery in Czarny Dunajec (a small town near the Slovak border) at that time. Emphasizing what has been lost by showing the Jewish past of Poland in ruins, and how in that sense the effects of the Holocaust on the built Jewish heritage are still visible, even today, is certainly a powerful and provocative way to begin an exhibition in a Jewish museum.

Is Tunisia Ready for a Jewish Museum? Perspectives on the Current Debates Surrounding the Status of Jewish History in My Country

This chapter charts the genesis of the Museum of Jewish-Tunisian Heritage in Tunis. Jewish culture has been exhibited in Tunisian museums since the beginning of the French Protectorate in 1881. Until recently, however, the idea of a museum entirely dedicated to Jewish-Tunisian history and culture was simply unconceivable in Tunisia, as Judaism was solidly understood as being tied to Israeli politics. Kazdaghli explains how the Jewish-Tunisian community, domestically and overseas, have seized the so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ and the democratic ideals it purports to push for the establishment of a joint-venture Museum of Jewish-Tunisian Heritage in Tunis. In a context of new democratic achievements, the museum project is publicised as an instrument of social change, a partner to the democratic transition. However, the chapter shows that such a project proves a difficult exercise as the organising committee navigates cultural taboos surrounding Judaism in Tunisian society, as well as conflicting patrimonial opinions within the community itself, in Tunisia and within the diaspora.

‘And for the enemies — tar…’

The interview with the head of the Educational and Research Centre for Bible and Judaic Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities begins with an account of the cultural and pedagogical exchange with the Israeli Bar-Ilan University (Ramat Gan) and Jabotinsky Institute (Tel Aviv). The interview goes into detail about the exhibition entitled ‘Nostalgia for world culture: O. E. Mandelstam’s library’, which took place in the Moscowbased Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre from December 2018 until March 2019 and enjoyed a total turnout of 45,000 visitors. Thanks to N. Mandelstam’s personal archive display, the visitors could learn about the poet’s reading preferences and his outstanding contemporaries, as well as how N. Mandelstam shaped the poet’s image among the Russianspeaking intelligentsia in the second half of the 20th c. Also discussed in the interview are Leonid Katsis’ recently published books on V. Mayakovsky and V. Jabotinsky.

Curating Conflict

This article compares four Jerusalem exhibits in different geographical and political contexts: at the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem, the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Jewish Museum Berlin. It examines the role of heritage narrative, focusing specifically on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is either openly engaged or alternatively avoided. In this regard, we specifically highlight the asymmetric power dynamics as a result of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, and how this political reality is addressed or avoided in the respective exhibits. Finally, we explore the agency of curators in shaping knowledge and perspective and study the role of the visitors community. We argue that the differences in approaches to exhibiting the city’s cultural heritage reveals how museums are central sites for the politics of the human gaze, where significant decisions are made regarding inclusion and exclusion of conflict.