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There’s been a flurry of interest of late in the bat mitzvah, a religious rite of passage that marks the Jewish girl’s coming of age.  It takes the form of panel discussions about ritual practice and performances of actual bat mitzvah speeches as well as a national collection effort to gather bat mitzvah paraphernalia.  Fascination with the bat mitzvah even culminates in a travelling exhibition, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age, which was made possible by the National Museum of American Jewish History and Moving Traditions.  Wherever you turn, the bat mitzvah is in the news.

Making its debut in New York in March 1922, the very first documented bat mitzvah was that of Judith Kaplan, the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, whose lively imagination and innovative spirit left a profound, and enduring, imprint on virtually every aspect of American Jewish life.

A bat mitzvah party. Flickr / godutchbaby

Today the bat mitzvah has become so integral a part of the American Jewish landscape that it’s hard to imagine a time when it wasn’t.  But ninety years ago, Judith Kaplan’s coming of age ceremony was a modest and unassuming bit of business -- more of an intimate family affair than a provocative, far-reaching communal innovation.

As it gained momentum and increasingly caught on among American Jewish girls and their parents, this newfangled rite of passage -- a 20th century phenomenon, through and through -- occasioned more than its fair share of controversy, especially among traditionally-minded congregants who had not grown up with it.  The bar mitzvah, after all, dates as far back as the 13th century. By comparison, the bat mitzvah is a Johnny-come-lately, a ritual without a pedigree. ...continue reading "Sister Act"

Now that grades have been submitted, the seniors have graduated and cap and gown have been returned to the back of the closet, it’s time to take stock of what the Program in Judaic Studies has accomplished over the course of the past academic year.

Whether exploring the millennial history of Jerusalem, taking the measure of Israeli culture, learning about the making of Jewish books, reckoning with the American Jewish experience and the challenges of memory or meeting weekly with contemporary Jewish writers, our classes have deepened our students’ critical encounter with the richness and complexity of Jewish arts and letters, geopolitics and philosophy.

report card
Flickr/AJ Cann
The faculty, too, has been energized by a wide array of informal, work-in-process presentations given each month by its colleagues on topics that encompassed art, politics and the self, the ancient Near East, medieval England, late 19th century Germany and contemporary Latin America.

Public programs, meanwhile, have enlarged our audience as well as our opportunities for partnerships with neighboring institutions. From the Cedar Film Retrospective, which was held on campus as well as at the D.C.-JCC, to “Tough Guys,” a cooperative venture with American University and the Foundation for Jewish Culture; from the annual Fleischman Lecture at The Phillips Collection to a behind-the-scenes tour of the new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, the Program in Judaic Studies has made a point of extending its reach into the community at large.

As we close the books on this academic year, we look forward to expanding our repertoire of courses and public events for the fall term. For starters, GW will welcome its very first Schusterman Visiting Artist from Israel -- Sharon Ya’ari is his name -- who will offer a very special honors course, “Eye on Israel: Photography of the Middle East,” as well as deliver a public talk hosted by the Department of Fine Arts and Art History.
...continue reading "Report card"

In my household, Sundays are usually given over to two rituals: reading The New York Times and taking in a museum exhibition. I suspect your household is no different.

But, as I explained recently to a group of GW alumni who had come together on a rainy Sunday morning to visit the brand new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia as part of an alumni series called “GW Culture Buffs,” the mere thought of doing exactly what we were doing had once generated more than its fair share of controversy.

We take our Sundays-at-the-museum for granted; earlier generations of culture buffs did not. Many museum officials and their elite patrons were initially rather resistant to the idea of opening the doors of, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on a Sunday, fearful lest it attract the wrong kind of people—those with “vandal hands” or broken English. A Sunday at the Met, they warned, was a “perilous experiment.”

Metropolitan Museum button
Once upon a time, Met entry buttons were useless on a Sunday. Credit: Charley Lhasa/Flickr
Americans, especially Jewish immigrants from the Lower East Side, didn’t see things quite that way and joined hands with socially conscious civic reformers to expand the franchise of museum-going by writing editorials in the Yiddish press and circulating petitions on the Jewish street.

Where America’s elite believed that visiting a museum was a privilege, Americans at the grass roots believed that it was a right, a perquisite of urban citizenship.

Were it not for the zealousness and passion with which they defended that belief, the nation’s museums would be grand, if empty, spaces.

As just about everyone knows by now, the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia has opened a spanking new, $150 million facility where, say its supporters, the "American Jewish dream has been fulfilled."

Meanwhile, the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., has just debuted a number of imaginative and thoughtful, if small-scale, exhibitions of its own. They run the gamut from a salute to Yiddish children's literature to "Shalom Bayes: Reflections on the American Jewish Home," which I had the good fortune to curate.

Image: National Yiddish Book Center
These two institutions couldn't be more different from one another. The National Museum of American Jewish History proudly takes its place within the urban landscape of downtown Philadelphia; the National Yiddish Book Center is nestled amidst a New England apple orchard.

One institution is big, bold and shiny; fashioned out of glass, it’s hard to miss. The other, which takes its architectural cues from the wooden synagogues of Poland, is a modest affair; fashioned out of wood, its exterior bears unmistakable signs of having weathered many a cold winter.

Orientation, no less than physical attributes, also distinguishes the two institutions. One looks outward, its sights set on America, or what historians have taken to calling the New World. The other looks inward, unabashedly embracing the Old.

And a third distinction: The National Museum of American Jewish History, as befits its mandate, gives objects pride of place. The National Yiddish Book Center, as befits its mission, gives pride of place to words.

Despite their manifold differences, what links one to the other is a shared commitment to showcasing and interpreting the richness and complexity of the cultural patrimony of the Jews, from those who spoke Yiddish to those who pointedly did not.

Some of us might prefer the company of objects to that of books, or the subtle gesture rather than the extravagant one. No matter. When it comes to the transmission of knowledge about matters Judaic, America's Jews need all the help and encouragement they can get.