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THE JEWISH CHRONICLE thejewishchronicle.net DECEMBER 1, 2011 KISLEV 5, 5772
Vol. 55, No. 29
Pittsburgh, PA
$1.50
Where Jewish, American history meet
National Jewish museum takes rightful place on Independence Mall BY BETH KISSILEFF JNS
PHILADELPHIA — “We moved from the 50-yard line to the owner’s box,” says Jay Nachman, the public relations director of the National Museum of American Jewish History, quoting the late museum board member George Ross as we look out on the spectacular view of Philadelphia from the balcony of the facility. The Jewish museum has been open to the public at its current location — overlooking Independence Mall, home of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence —since Nov. 26, 2010, nearly a full year now. The museum was previously at the Fourth Street location
of Congregation Mikveh Israel (a congregation first opened in 1740 to serve Spanish-Portuguese Jews), with a 15,000-square foot exhibit space open since July 4, 1976. Its current home is more grandiose — a 100,000-square foot, $150 million building designed by architect James Stewart Polshek, whose other work includes the “Newseum” in Washington, D.C., an expansion of New York’s American Museum of Natural History and the Clinton Presidential Library in Little
Rock, Ark. Gallagher & Associates designed the exhibits, and the museum’s Deputy Director Josh Perelman aided in curating. On the way to the museum, I pass many Jewish landmarks, including the Jewish Federation building (which contains the Jewish Publication Society, the oldest Jewish publication house in the country), the Beth Zion-Beth Israel Synagogue on 18th Street, and the YM/YWHA on 15th and Pine. Jews have clearly had a presence in Philadelphia since the early days of the city. Since the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written here, Nachman said, there is no better place to
tell the story of how Jews participated in — and were changed by — the freedoms granted with the founding of America. Brandeis University professor Jonathan Sarna, the chief historian at the museum and a leading scholar of American Jewry, agreed. “It is after all an amazing thing that you have such a museum on the [Independence] Mall in Philadelphia overlooking the Liberty Bell, and a stone’s throw away from the Constitution center,” Sarna said. Beth Wenger, professor of history and director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, was a member of the museum’s advisory Please see History, page 19.
Barry Halkin/Halkin Photography
The National Museum of American Jewish History’s building for the past year. Facing Independence Mall in Philadelphia is a glass prism, expressing “the openness of America as well as the perennial fragility of democracy,” according to the museum.
B USINES S 14/C L AS SIFIED 17/O BITUARIES 18/C OMMUNITY 13 O PINION 6/R EAL E STATE 16/S IMCHAS 12
Times To Remember
KINDLE SABBATH CANDLES: 4:36 p.m. EST. SABBATH ENDS: 5:38 p.m. EST.