Yeshiva University Museum – From Under the Fig Tree

Building blocks

joselitMay 5, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Talk about engaging the senses is thick on the ground in contemporary educational and museological circles, where everyone and her cousin makes a case for enriching the classroom or the gallery with more than meets the eye. All too often, though, it remains just that: talk, talk, talk.

Model of Beth Alpha Synagogue (Jezreel Valley, Israel, 6th century). Displaycraft, 1972/YU Museum

But last Thursday evening, within the precincts of Yeshiva University Museum’s gem of an exhibition, “Modeling the Synagogue – From Dura to Touro,” the promise of synthesizing object and text with sound was fully realized. I don’t mean one of those sound cones under which small groups of visitors dutifully huddle, or the counterpoint of a soundtrack that wafts and drifts throughout the exhibit space. I mean honest-to-goodness, full throttled sound: that of the human voice, the cello and the clarinet.

“Modeling the Synagogue” takes the form of a series of beautifully rendered maquettes of synagogues from yesteryear. There’s one that represents Toledo and another Florence; a third depicts a synagogue from Dusseldorf and a fourth, one from Newport, Rhode Island. Much like dollhouses whose appeal rests largely on their miniaturization of detail and space, these models also stimulate the imagination. We peer inside, trying to conjure up what it might have been like to lean against a Moorish-styled column, to have sat upright in a wooden pew, to be surrounded by light.

But our imaginations can go only so far. We take the measure of these wondrous spaces but stop short of inhabiting them -- which is where music comes into play. An animating presence, it enables us to connect.

Under the sensitive, deft and playful direction of Elad Kabilio and his ensemble, “MusicTalks,” each synagogue model generated its own musical associations, from a haunting Ladino folk song to a touching rendition of Copeland’s “Simple Gifts.” As we moved from model to model, from one time and place to another, we were accompanied by the cello, the clarinet, and the human voice as well as by a varying set of sounds.

Most of the time we listened raptly, attentively to the performers. But on one occasion, those in the gallery couldn’t help themselves and, unbidden, began to sing along with the professional soloist as she gave voice to the refrain of an age-old Yom Kippur piyut.

I don’t know how the soloist felt about this spontaneous musical eruption, but I’ve never experienced anything quite like it, certainly not within the hallowed, and usually silent, halls of a museum. Touching and affirming, enlivening and inspiring, the sound was as much a marvel as the musicianship, and the history, it brought it to life.

Crowd sourcing

joselitMarch 29, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Marisa Scheinfeld, Indoor Pool, Grossinger's Catskill Resort and Hotel, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

Gallery talks are nice. So, too, are lectures and other forms of cultural outreach and engagement. But when it comes to eliciting a response, there’s nothing quite like the Q&A that follows on the heels of a public program about American Jewish culture, especially if its destination is that of the Catskills. Talk about audience participation!

The recipe is simple: Take a group whose members make up what the French call a “certain age,” leaven with memories of that former “kingdom of outdoor happiness,” as Grossinger’s, the eminent Catskills hotel, once put it, and mix it up with contemporary observations about Jewish history and humor, food and frolic -- and you’re off and running.

“Echoes of the Borscht Belt: The Contemporary Photography of Marisa Scheinfeld” is now on view at Yeshiva University Museum. An evocative and witty meditation on place, on the tussle between History and Mother Nature, the exhibition doesn’t just document what happened to the Catskills when its fortunes ran dry. Here, subject matter and visual artistry collude, compelling the viewer to reckon with absence and loss.

The exhibition, which will be closing on April 12th, after which it’ll be headed for the Yiddish Book Center, was accompanied the other evening by a conversation among Ms. Scheinfeld, Jacob Wisse, the museum’s imaginative director, and myself. Although we didn’t lack for what to say -- our conversation encompassed a wide range of topics, from creative land use to Jewish history -- it was the audience that made the evening a success.

Some attendees reminisced about their days as a band leader or as a guest at a bungalow colony. Others told a slightly naughty joke. Still others speculated on why the Catskills declined. Nearly everyone had something to say -- and said it. At one memorable point in the proceedings, some audience members even started speaking directly to other audience members, bypassing the moderator entirely.

One extremely animated participant had been a former tumler at a Catskills establishment. His job was to get the guests, their bellies filled with food, up and about, exercising, swimming, walking, moving and interacting with one another. He would have had an easy time of it with this crowd.

Is There A Doctor in the House?

joselitMay 29, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Until this past week, the relationship of the Jews to medicine and of faith to healing were subjects of abiding intellectual and ethnographic curiosity but not much more.

Over the years, I had avidly read the work of my colleagues David Ruderman and John Efron on the history of Jewish doctoring both in the 16^th century and at the dawn of the 20^th.

I had also watched with growing fascination as synagogues of every denomination made more and more room in the Shabbat morning service for the collective recitation of a prayer for the sick, a practice that altered the rhythm and sensibility of the liturgy.

What’s more, a visit to Yeshiva University Museum’s brand new exhibition, Trail of the Magic Bullet: The Jewish Encounter with Modern Medicine, 1860-1960, was high on my summer ‘to do’ list. An inquiry into why so many Jews took up medicine, it features a wide array of medical paraphernalia, photographs and archival matter designed to provide the larger historical and cultural context for the Jewish presence in this most modern of professions.

When my husband took ill rather suddenly last weekend and was hospitalized, my professional interest turned, overnight, into something deeply and irrevocably personal. From the doctor in one hospital who told us categorically to stop davening (or dithering) over a pressing medical decision to the signage in another that highlights the Jesuit tradition of cura personalis or care of the whole person, the association between religion and medicine is no longer just an academic pursuit.