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More than a century ago, visitors to London’s Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition encountered an embarrassment of riches: nearly 3,000 items that ranged from a Hebrew version of “God Save the Queen” to a brass model of Solomon’s Temple.

Shofar. Flickr/Ars Electronica
Shofar. Flickr/Ars Electronica

An attempt to shore up and secure Anglo-Jewry’s relationship to the British Empire, an exercise in both apologetics and cultural pride, the exhibition dazzled the eye, or so we are told.

The students in my grad seminar, “Displaying Jewish Culture,” where we recently took the measure of the exhibition, were not so much dazzled as baffled. Its sweep and scale they understood as strategic, a way to make the case that the Jews had a rich and complex cultural patrimony, but the paucity of interpretive information that accompanied the objects on display was something else again.

Consider, for example, item number 1535, a shofar, or, as the catalogue explained, a “ram’s horn trumpet.” Housed in a section of the exhibition given over to music, it was identified simply as “quaint and old.” Ditto for item number 1540, a shofar described as “very old,” and its companion, number 1548, which featured “black from age” as its label.

Where, oh, where, wondered the students, was information about context or usage or significance?
Surely, vague descriptive phrases on the order of ‘old’ and ‘very old’ didn’t do much for the shofar, especially among the uninitiated.

As we batted about the absence of detail from our latter-day perches, generating lively conversation about the sea changes in museological conventions and expectations since 1887, it occurred to me that the curators of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition had gotten it right.

When it came to the shofar, what really mattered was not so much its materiel or place of origin or maker. A blast from the past, the ram’s horn trumpeted the values of historicity, connecting one generation with another.

On that note, here’s wishing one and all a sweet new year and a vibrant and meaningful 5778.

Among the thousands of objects on view in London in 1887 at the storied Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition were 18 shofaroth, or, as the catalogue text would have it, “ram’s horn trumpets.” Variously described as “old,” “very old,” “quaint and old,” and “black from age,” these instruments were heralded for their association with practices that went as far back as the Bible.

The antiquity of the shofar was not the only thing of interest to the exhibition’s organizers. What also fascinated them was its distinctive sound. Without going into any detail, they categorically allowed how it was downright “distressing to Western ears.”

Shofar
Shofar. Flickr/Contemporary Jewish Museum
An exercise in both apologetics and ethnography, the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition reflected many of the prejudices of its time. Designed to demystify the Jews, their history and material culture, it ended up rendering them more of a curiosity than the stuff of common ground.

In the years since the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition made its debut, we’ve come to see things differently. Instead of apologizing for and explaining away the persistence of age-old customs, practices and sounds, this generation of modern Jews is more apt to relish than rue them.

As we stand poised to usher in 5773, let the distinctive sounds of the shofar ring as loudly and clearly as a clarion call: Shanah tovah, a good year, for one and all.