Museum hours

Highlight of Last Season
(December 29, 2008 – March 15, 2009)

I have often said that an exhibition is really like a story told through a picture book. Our current exhibition is Shooting Star and a list of its “pictures”, more specifically, its object list, might not reveal the story line so easily. What do a lock of hair, some ice skates, photographs, silver candle sticks, a top hat, some dolls and a child’s tea set tell us? The exhibition object list also includes a set of photographs from the Yad VaShem Archives (Israel’s Holocaust Museum), and original art work. How do these disparate items come together to tell a story that is important to a Jewish museum? 

Shooting Star tells stories of hope and despair. It found its beginning with a story of a child’s doll left behind when its owner escaped Nazi Germany for Palestine during WWII. It found its impetus through a photograph of a little girl bought on EBay. The 1938 photograph was of Judith Sternchuss (Shooting Star) who was killed in 1944 at the Stutthof concentration camp. Her fate was ascertained only years later by a childhood Christian friend who had kept the photo and sought out her friend’s fate. In the photograph a beautiful, young Judith lovingly cradles her doll. 

These two incidents lead me to research within our own congregation. Right here at KI I found miraculous stories of children saved from the Holocaust. In every case a doll was central to their stories. As a curator I felt that the objects needed interpretation, commentary, elucidation. I immediately thought of the wonderful members of the KI Artists’ Collective and I invited them to create original artwork that would interpret the theme of a childhood lived or lost through the terrible prism of the Holocaust. 

Families fleeing from Nazi terror often traveled with only the clothes on their backs. If a mother managed to save the family’s Shabbat candlesticks it was considered a triumph. Therefore, for a child to save a treasured doll, truck or stuffed animal was highly unusual. There is a nurturing comfort factor associated with having a doll or stuffed animal and one can only imagine the importance of the inanimate companions, presented here, to the children who loved them. Marlene Adler, Linda Nesvisky, Rhea Dennis, Stan Singer and Joan Myerson Shrager have each created moving and original art work that can only ad to the emotional impact of the stories told here. 

On Sunday February 1^st, at 3:00pm, KI member, Ruth Kapp Hartz will speak at a reception in celebration of the exhibition. Ruth is the subject of the book, “Your Name is Renee: Ruth Kapp Hartz’ Story as a Hidden Child in Nazi-Occupied France”

Author: Stacy Cretzmayer, Oxford University Press, 1999

Photo by Stan Singer  (About Stan Singer)

View other images for the Sternchuss exhibition

Link to previous Exhibitions

Some of the artists whose works have been exhibited recently at the
 Temple Judea Museum
 

Temple Judea Museum
Rita Rosen Poley, Director/Curator
Karen Shain Schloss, Chair

THE TEMPLE JUDEA MUSEUM
The Temple Judea Museum was founded in 1984 to contain the merged Judaica collections of two Philadelphia – area synagogues, Temple Judea, and Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel. The museum staff includes a director/curator and an active group of volunteers. The Friends of the Museum offers tours and special events.

PERMANENT COLLECTION:
The Temple Judea Museum has as its mission the presentation of Judaica, the visual objects that signify the observances of Judaism. The mandate of the museum begins with a collection of almost 1000 objects: its preservation, growth, exhibition, and use as an educational tool. 

The museum's collection contains artifacts from countries around the world including: the United States, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, France, Hungary, Holland, England and Israel. Holdings include a fine assortment of antiquities from ancient Israel, a comprehensive textile collection, books, paintings, prints, photographs, and a variety of ephemera that complement the many precious and rare objects preserved in this collection.

A FEW HIGHLIGHTS:

• A major collection of silver ceremonial objects.
• The second oldest American ketubah (marriage contract) from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1778.
• An embroidered Torah wimpel (binder), one of the oldest known to have survived the Holocaust, made from an infant's swaddling cloth, 1695
• A unique, contemporary Elijah's Chair, used in covenant ceremonies, commissioned by the Friends of the Museum.
• A religious commentary printed in Venice, Italy, 1574.

ACTIVITIES:
In addition to its collection and preservation activities the museum operates an annual schedule of three to four original exhibitions that are free and open to the community. These exhibitions vary widely in content and theme, but the educational content of an exhibition is always of paramount importance. Of each yearly cycle of exhibitions one is drawn exclusively from the collection. The other exhibitions extend the reach and scope of the museum beyond the limits of the collection. A recent exhibition about the Bezalel School, Israel’s first art school, included objects drawn from the Temple Judea Museum along with works borrowed from three private collections. 

Some past exhibitions have focused on the Jews of Ethiopia, Jewish soldiers in the Civil War, Israel, Jewish rituals of the life cycle, the Holocaust, comic books as an expression of Jewish experience, hand-made books, and art of the bible. Every one of our exhibitions contains a separate set of labels written especially for children, so that families visiting independently can approach the exhibition material in an interactive way. 

Lectures and tours, often drawing visitors from different religious and ethnic groups, deepen the educational value of the exhibitions. Senior, church, and school groups are among the many visitors the museum welcomes each year from our local community, Greater Philadelphia, many states of the union, and abroad. Museum volunteers conduct special tours of the synagogue’s famous suite of stained glass windows by noted artist, Jacob Landau.

 

For more information, or to set up a group tour, call the Museum at 215-887-2027 or 215-887-8700, or fax 215-887-1070.
  E-Mail:  TJMuseum@aol.com

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