Speculating about the Jewish identity of celebrities has been a popular parlor game for generations of Jews, most notably played in recent years in Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song,” in which the comedian lists famous people who are Jewish or “half-Jewish.” The song itself is a mark of a people’s progress. Where once the presence of an identifiable Jew in a position of prominence was rare enough to serve as a source of comfort and encouragement to members of a minority that was suffering from widespread discrimination, the subject is more a matter of humor today than anything else. American Jews are as much a part of the establishment as the Episcopalians that once sought to exclude them.
But this record of achievement has not cooled the desire in some to extol famous Jews, whose glory is still presumed to reflect to some degree on their co-religionists, no matter how tenuous the celebrity’s connection to Jewish peoplehood or faith might be. This reflects both the vanity of a community determined to draw attention to its importance as well as its lingering insecurity. This impulse to self-commemoration has been taken to new heights with the creation of a sparkling new $150 million museum that has arisen on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.
The National Museum of American Jewish History unveiled in November represents more than a considerable investment on the part of Philadelphia’s Jewish community (aided in part by a national fundraising campaign and considerable contributions from local government) in monumental architecture and artifacts. It is a shrine to American Jewish success as well as the ethos of American democracy.
The choice of location is pointed. Visitors who venture out onto the museum’s balcony can literally look down on the Liberty Bell (or rather, the Visitor’s Center that is the home of the bell). To their immediate left, they can see Independence Hall, the birthplace of the American republic. The symbolism is as striking as it is obvious: American freedom has meant freedom for the Jews.
But the institution is not merely another paean to patriotism that is the stock in trade for a host of attractions in Philadelphia. Rather, it is also a tribute to a certain vision of a Jewish identity—one that is assertive enough to plant its flag in the vicinity of sacred national ground while also careful not to be too parochial in its outlook. From its perch, a stone’s throw from the place where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed, the museum radiates a spirit of optimism and self-satisfaction. Here American Jews live in the best of all possible worlds, overcoming bias while achieving distinction by dint of hard work and the blessings of American liberty.
This meliorist outlook presents the story of Jewish life on these shores from its beginnings to the present as an inexorable march from marginality to a degree of influence and acceptance for Jews that would have surely been unimaginable to those hanging about Independence Hall in the 18th century.
The original home of this 34-year-old institution was just a block away in a building where it shared space with Congregation Mikveh Israel, the city’s oldest synagogue. That 1976 building had a profile so low that only those who deliberately sought it out noticed it. The one-room museum had no collection worth the name, but by the late 1990s, its supporters were determined to do something on a larger scale. Within a decade, they had, with substantial help from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, amassed the vast sums needed to build on a new site where an office building had previously stood.
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Whether such a considerable investment was a wise use of Jewish funds that might have been better applied to more pressing matters is an open question, especially if the museum fails to attract the same influx of non-Jewish tourists that has made Washington, D.C.’s Holocaust Museum a success. But there is little doubt that the museum’s founders have gotten their money’s worth when it comes to a building whose striking presence now dominates the historic district. Its architect, James Polshek, says his design, which features a terra-cotta façade over a solid gray granite five-story building veiled by a translucent glass curtain, represents an effort to integrate this large structure into the Mall, with its modest 18th-century buildings and low-key home for the bell. The visual effect of the structure belies that carefully composed claim, however.
The museum has also amassed an impressive collection. It bills itself as the only one devoted solely to telling the story of Jews in America, and it tells it fairly well. The well-designed permanent exhibition comprises three floors devoted to a chronological history of American Jews from the 1654 arrival of a boatload of refugees from Brazil in New York to the present. While any such ethno-religious perspective on history is vulnerable to charges of exaggerating the importance of its subjects and downplaying their faults, this museum avoids both extremes. The activities of Haym Solomon, the Philadelphia financier whose work on behalf of the cause of the American Revolution was subsequently inflated to mythic proportions by Jews who wished to claim a bigger share of the glory of the new nation’s victory, are put into proper perspective. Jewish merchants living in both the North and the South are also shown to have played a small part in the slave trade, with a pair of slave manacles prominently displayed.
Though much of the historical narrative is told in a “we were there, too” manner, controversies are neither avoided nor dwelt on. The 1883 crisis in the Reform movement—in part the result of a lavish formal dinner to celebrate the first graduating class of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati that featured an elaborate presentation of non-kosher food—is represented by the original menu of that notorious “treifa banquet.” All the same, not much space is devoted to what the crisis meant for the community, with traditionalists storming out and later founding Conservative Judaism. Nor is much said about Conservative Judaism altogether. Similarly, the Rosenberg espionage case is presented in one section more as a critical cultural event than anything else, with the fact of the spies’ guilt being relegated to a note at the bottom of the display.
All major trends in modern Jewish history are dutifully touched upon, with the labor movement, Zionism, Soviet Jewry, civil rights, and feminist activism all given their due. But the sort of bland history practiced here is made manifest by the minimalist account of the controversy over the failure of Jews to speak out in favor of rescuing their European brothers and sisters during the Holocaust and against the indifference of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The unwillingness of the leaders of the organized Jewish world to confront FDR is one of the most troubling episodes in American Jewish history. Moreover, the subsequent reaction to the perceived silence of American Jews to the Holocaust provided a great deal of the motivation for much of the history that followed in terms of activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry and support for Israel. While this chapter is noted in passing, the section fails to convey the importance of this issue or the debate it engendered.
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In the final analysis, the museum curators are far more interested in the popular culture and lifestyles of their subjects than anything else. The presence of Jews in the movies and on television is portrayed in great detail, as are the postwar move to the suburbs, the ingathering at Borscht Belt hotels, and the centrality of summer camps. The key subject that gets the least attention throughout the museum is the Jewish faith itself. Some space is devoted to practice and even a multimedia display about synagogue architecture, but this is a museum about Jews that is not especially comfortable with Judaism as a religion. (The almost complete lack of interest in the Orthodox community is particularly striking.) The National Museum of American Jewish History is more interested in portraying how Jews tried to fit into American society than how Jews have reinforced the separate identity required by Judaism itself.
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After going through the permanent historical exhibit, visitors arrive back at the ground floor, where they are confronted with the museum’s most hyped as well as its most questionable feature: the “Only in America Jewish Hall of Fame,” featuring an inaugural class of 18 members. The decision to create an arbitrary designation of the most important figures in the community’s history is hard to defend on any terms other than publicity and crowd-pleasing, no matter that a panel of historians chose them. Suffice it to say that the reputations of such figures as Louis Brandeis, Jonas Salk, and Albert Einstein are not enhanced by the posthumous honor that has been given them, while the inclusion of Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand in such august company is an open invitation to satire.
Those viewing the Jewish Hall of Fame may enjoy looking at Irving Berlin’s piano (upon which a manuscript of the lyrics of his song “God Bless America” is displayed, not his equally popular “White Christmas”) or memorabilia from Sandy Koufax’s baseball career. They may leave scratching their heads about the puzzling inclusion of perfume magnate Estée Lauder and obscure labor organizer Rose Schneiderman alongside Golda Meir and Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold. But no visitor will leave without coming to see the museum’s view of American Jewry as simply a more dignified version of Adam Sandler’s song brought to life.
More than anything else in the National Museum of American Jewish History, the Hall forces us to ask: What is the point of this exercise in communal ethnic pride? Is it mere celebration of a group of Americans whose impressive achievements and celebrity are a testimony to the freedom that the country promised and delivered? Or is it just as much a measure of the insecurities and the vanity of a generation of Jews whose desire to heap praise on the past is a reflection of its inability to confront a problematic future?
While, as the museum’s exhibits amply prove, Jews have helped shape American politics and culture, part of the price they have paid for it is the creation of a Jewish community that is largely secular, assimilated, and rapidly losing the sense of Jewish peoplehood previous generations took for granted. The ultimate sustainability as a coherent community of the politically influential, economically affluent, and culturally sophisticated American Jewry that the museum portrays and applauds is an open question. And it is one for which this institution not only has no answers but does not even bother to ask the questions.
If the overall tone of this attractive and interesting museum is one of a complacent pride in the past and present and insufficient concern about the problems that await its subjects in the future, then it may be the perfect reflection of the zeitgeist of the present-day Jews who built it. As such, like so many other monuments to history, it may tell us as much if not more about the weaknesses of its creators as it does about their strengths.
