Greetings from Home: 350 Years of American Jewish Life
Center for Jewish History/American Jewish Historical Society, 2005
Greetings from Home: 350 Years of American Jewish Life
To celebrate and commemorate the arrival of the first Jews in North America in 1654, the Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society hired me as guest curator for Greetings from Home. Drawing on the rich collections of CJH’s constituent institutions—the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Yeshiva University Museum, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—the exhibition offered an overview of American Jewish history from the birth of communities in colonial New York, Newport, Philadelphia, and Charleston to the great waves of 19th and 20th-century immigrants and the rise of American Jewish cultural and institutional life.
We got to display some wonderful artifacts (including a table model of Newport’s 18th-century Touro Synagogue, a 1920 linotype keyboard for printing in Yiddish and English, Albert Einstein’s 1936 Declaration of Intention to become a U. S. Citizen, and a wedding gown from the Bukharian Jewish community in Queens) while emphasizing how American Jewish history has always been intertwined with the experiences of Jewish communities around the world. I also wrote an essay in the accompanying guidebook to the exhibition. Designed by Robin Parkinson, Exhibition Art & Technology.
Rosh Hashanah greeting card, Hebrew Publishing Co., New York, 1909. American Jewish Historical Society.
Linotype keyboard with Yiddish/English letters, c. 1920. American Jewish Historical Society.
Bukharian wedding gown, Queens, New York, c. 2000. American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House.
“The Goldbergs” puzzle, color lithograph, Chicago, Illinois, 1932. Yeshiva University Museum.
