Uncategorized
As trial begins in Tree of Life massacre, Pittsburgh’s Jews struggle with what to reveal and what to conceal
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — On Friday afternoon, Squirrel Hill was suffused with spring breezes and pink dogwoods, and alive with the movement that typifies the coming of Shabbat.
Toddlers scrambled up the jungle gym in the JCC playground, while the chatter in cafes was about a looming storm that could soak the walk to synagogue on Saturday. Murray Avenue Kosher was emptying out of challahs.
Barely present, at least on the surface, was any indication that Monday morning would hold a turning point in the community’s greatest trauma. That’s when jury selection was to begin in the trial of the man accused of shattering Shabbat on Oct. 27, 2018, with gunfire. His massacre of 11 worshipers, in a synagogue building a 10-minute stroll from the downtown of this leafy, heavily Jewish neighborhood, was the deadliest-ever attack on U.S. Jews.
But behind the scenes, there are clear signs that the trial’s proximity is being felt. Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10/27 Healing Partnership, which provides post-traumatic therapy for the community, said that as the trial nears, requests for treatment have spiked.
“The trauma cues that for a while bothered us right after the shooting — for some people it might be ambulances, for other people it might be media, for some people it might be the sound of multiple police cars — you get to a place where they don’t bother you as much,” she said. “But the increased media attention and the increased awareness of this upcoming trial for a number of people is bringing back for them that maybe they didn’t do their own healing the first time around.”
A Starbucks in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh is decorated with a memorial for the victims of the 2018 massacre at the city’s Tree of Life synagogue, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
There were three congregations in the building: Tree of Life and New Light, both affiliated with the Conservative movement, and Dor Hadash, which is Reconstructionist.
The 11 victims were brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, couple Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Rose Malinger, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger. Seven were from Tree of Life, three were from New Light and one was from Dor Hadash.
For their families, their friends, their congregations and their broader Jewish community, the legacy of the massacre is a deep-seated longing for control, a longing to never have to think again of the gunman and of the anguish he left in his wake, while grappling with tender memories of the dead, of the decades spent in celebration and in prayer in the building.
Who narrates this story, the gunman or his victims? That struggle now looms as the alleged gunman goes to trial. The community is wrestling with questions such as where and whether to put the bullet-riddled artifacts, whether to worship at the site, whether to even speak of the massacre and how and whether the gunman lives or dies.
”We believe strongly that this antisemitic attack should not stop people from practicing and being Jewish,” Feinsten said. “For a lot of people, that’s an active choice that they have to work at. It doesn’t come easily after feeling unsafe in that environment to then work to find safety in it. But a lot of people have chosen to do that.”
On Friday, Feinstein was organizing support services for families who would, if they so choose, be sequestered in a separate room in the court where they could view the trial. (Family members may also ask to be seated in the courtroom.) She assigned six therapists to be present with the families.
Compounding the revisited trauma of the event, the families are divided over whether the gunman, should he be convicted, deserves the death penalty. The accused has a lawyer, Judy Clarke, known as “the attorney for the damned” for her determination to keep her clients from execution.
What’s clear is that the Jews of Squirrel Hill are taking the trial on with their characteristic spirit of collaboration. The community has hired public relations specialists to handle media inquiries ahead of the trial, in part to safeguard locals from being pressed to answer questions that could harm them or shatter the sense of unity. Congregants reached by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency dutifully deferred to the list of approved contacts on a list distributed by a PR agency.
On Friday afternoon, signs of unity that flooded the city in the immediate aftermath of the shooting were still visible. In a tobacconist’s window a sign with the slogan “No place for hate/Stronger than hate,” which had proliferated throughout the neighborhood after the attack, remained propped up next to a flag and an ad for the lottery. A Starbucks had on its window white paint drawings depicting “love,” “kindness” and “hope” in English and in Hebrew, alongside symbols: the Star of David, a heart and a dove.
A tobacconist window includes a poster of the “No Place for Hate” slogan that proliferated after the Tree of Life Massacre in 2018, in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
Representatives of the community talk about “doing Jewish” as a means of coping, including redoubling the very activities — allying with the city’s Black minority and advocating for immigration, refugees and gun control — that fueled the rage of the alleged attacker.
The attacker allegedly was driven in part by the partnership between Dor Hadash and HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group, and the congregation’s sponsorship of refugee families.
“We have, if anything, doubled down on our commitment to immigrants and refugees,” said Dana Kellerman, the chair of the communications committee at Dor Hadash. “We are currently coming up on the end of our first year working with a new resettlement program to resettle a Congolese immigrant family in Pittsburgh, and we have every intention of when the year commitment is up of working with a second family.”
Kellerman said the shooting had “honestly become part of the background of our existence at this point.” In keeping with her congregation’s rules aimed at protecting their community, Kellerman declined to talk about the day of the massacre, the death penalty or about details of the trial. But she was open about the ways in which her congregation has leaned into the values it has long held, and that the gunman so reviled.
“We have become louder and more public about practicing our Judaism,” she said. Now, she said, the congregation incorporates advocacy for refugees into its service, with liturgical readings on immigration.
There are other changes. “We even have hats now! We have baseball caps!” Kellerman said with a smile, unearthing a photo of herself in a white cap with “Dor Hadash” and a stylized Magen David in blue, standing alongside gun control advocates.
“Previously we all would have shown up as our individual selves, and now we show up in our Dor Hadash baseball caps,” she said. “Mine kept blowing off.”
Steve Cohen, the co-president of New Light, said the congregation’s relationship with Black churches in the city has reached new intensity since the massacre. The congregation’s rabbi and congregants who know Hebrew partner with the churches to analyze sacred texts in the original.
“We would bring our Tanachs [Hebrew Bibles], and the Christian congregation would bring their Bible and then we would talk about the Proverbs and go through it, not just what the intention of the author was, but how different ways the same words can be translated in order to imply different things,” he said. “And so we went through the whole Book of Proverbs with the Rodman Street Baptist Church, and this past winter, we did the selected Psalms with the faith and Destiny Church on the north side.”
The interior of the new sanctuary of the New Light congregation, four and half years after a gunman massacred three of its congregants, in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
New Light took its cue from survivors of the 2015 attack on the Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, Cohen said. Leaders of New Light traveled to the church and heard from its elders that it was not enough to tend to the traumatized individuals, but to the community; they emphasized outreach, bringing congregants back in.
“That’s a lot of the reason why we have an outpouring of members who never attended shul now attending shul,” he said.
Feinstein, too, said she had an intensification of religious and ritual observance among her clients: more frequent attendance at Shabbat services, forming a daily minyan, finding a study partner for daily Talmud study.
Kellerman said the community has become closer; she sees it in congregants who linger. “It shows up in things like people showing up for Friday night services, and hanging out to chat or getting on a little early to chat,” she said.
A rendition of architect Daniel Libeskind’s plans for the interior of the new Tree of Life synagogue. (Tree of Life)
In the days leading up to the trial, the community bid farewell to the most salient relic of that painful day: the hulking synagogue building on the corner of Wilkins and Shady that has stood empty since then. All three congregations have decamped to nearby synagogues, leaving behind the chain-link fence draped with paintings from children across the country wishing for strength.
“Nobody has been meeting in the synagogue since the day of the shooting,” said Carole Zawatsky, the Tree of Life CEO who is overseeing the plans to replace the building. The only people to have been inside at all, she said, were survivors and “special friends” — donors to the rebuilding and politicians.
Zawatsky said it is wrenching to even contemplate returning for some. “You can walk through the building and see where the gunman was destructive,” she said. “You can see where the gunman was apprehended, where the gunman opened fire. It’s devastating to witness.”
But some intend to: Tree of Life lost seven congregants but plans on returning once the building is rebuilt as a museum and education center focused on the dangers of extremism.
On Sunday, the Tree of Life congregation had an outdoor ceremony to say “L’hitraot,” Hebrew for “until we meet again,” to the building as it has existed up to now.
“We are grateful to God for the thousands of blessings that have passed through these doors,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi who sheltered congregants and alerted police, said at the ceremony. “We cannot, we must not, permit one day … to define us, nor outweigh all the good.”
The new center is being designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect who designed the master plan for the World Trade Center site reconstruction in New York and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
But Dor Hadash and New Light decided their moves were permanent in part because families of their victims swore never to return to the building.
New Light is now ensconced in what once was a secondary chapel at the Beth Shalom synagogue, as if it has been there for decades: Plaques honoring past donors and presidents adorn the walls of the sanctuary. The only signs of the massacre are the 1,000 paper cranes Pittsburgh’s Japanese community gave the congregation, reflecting a Japanese tradition that folding cranes will make a wish come true. They hang at the entrance to the sanctuary, unexplained by any plaque. There is a stained glass monument to the three victims at the cemetery where they are buried.
Even with Tree of Life’s commitment to return, many questions remain about what that will look like. The congregation has yet to decide what objects will stay in the sanctuary, what will stay in storage and what will be part of a separate exhibit, Zawatsky said.
“The first work that’s had to be done for the synagogue is ‘What are the things that need to be saved and go into storage during construction?’” she said.
In some ways, she indicated, the work of rebuilding could bear some resemblance to the balancing act that the community will have to navigate during the alleged shooter’s trial.
“We are thinking deeply about how you exhibit some of these materials,” Zaslavsky said, “in ways that are both teachable moments and don’t retraumatize.”
—
The post As trial begins in Tree of Life massacre, Pittsburgh’s Jews struggle with what to reveal and what to conceal appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Montenegro’s tiny Jewish community navigates uncertain territory as hostility toward Israel increases
(JTA) — PODGORICA, Montenegro — At the entrance to Nikšić, Montenegro’s second-largest city, a vintage fighter jet painted in the colors of the Israeli Air Force perches atop a giant concrete pedestal, as if about to take flight.
The monument, unveiled in 2024, commemorates “Operation Velvetta” — a top-secret plan that ferried 17 Supermarine Spitfire aircraft from Czechoslovakia, via what was then Yugoslavia, to Israel in 1948. The brazen scheme, carried out under the noses of British and Soviet spies, helped ensure the fledgling Jewish state’s military superiority during its War of Independence.
At the monument’s base, a bronze plaque in Serbian, English and Hebrew calls it “a permanent reminder to the unbreakable friendship of Montenegro and Israel.”
Yet lately, that friendship is being tested in ways not seen since Montenegro — smallest of the six republics that once comprised Yugoslavia — declared its independence in 2006.
“Yes, there’s antisemitism here. It’s much better than some other places, but the situation has changed,” said Rabbi Ari Edelkopf, who heads the Religious Jewish Community of Montenegro in Podgorica, the capital. “When I came here, I never believed we’d need 24-hour security. But since Oct. 7, we’ve had Free Gaza marches in all the major cities. My office is following every antisemitic portal here in Montenegro,” he said, referring to websites that report local news. “We’re paying a lawyer to monitor all this.”
A replica of a Supermarine Spitfire fighter jet honors the 1948 “Operation Velvet” in Nikšić, Montenegro — a monument unveiled in 2024 that symbolizes Montenegro’s historic friendship with Israel. (Larry Luxner)
Several recent incidents involving Israeli visitors to this Connecticut-sized country of 625,000, have unnerved the local Jewish community, which numbers fewer than 1,000, even as the capital is on the verge of getting a major new Jewish cultural center set for completion this fall.
In the Adriatic beach resort of Budva, a recent violent brawl between local Montenegrins and some 20 Israeli tourists has triggered alarm among both local Jews and Israeli tourists.
It’s still unclear who or what provoked the incident, which took place after midnight July 12 at a beach bar where the Israelis — 12 men and eight women — had been drinking. Edelkopf said he believed the incident had begun with a personal altercation but escalated when the locals realized the tourists they were sparring with were Israeli.
According to an Israeli government alert about the incident, the locals “shouted ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘F*** Israel’” after learning about the origins of the tourists, who the alert said were not wearing indicators of their national or religious identity.
“Then they came back with a few friends and really beat the hell out of them,” said Edelkopf, a Chabad rabbi who’s originally from Los Angeles and who’s lived in Montenegro for nine years.
“They put out cigarettes on their faces, and threw metal chairs and tables at them. It was horrible and very aggressive,” he said. “Most of the Israelis were injured; one of them had a broken jaw.”
The Israeli government assisted in helping the Israeli tourists expedite their flights out of Montenegro, though one member of the group remained in the country while hospitalized, according to Israel’s National Center for Combating Antisemitism, an initiative of the Diaspora ministry. The ministry’s alert said that police failed to intervene.
Rabbi Ari Edelkopf, a Los Angeles-born Chabad emissary, reads a story about himself in a Podgorica newspaper in April 2026. Edelkopf heads the Religious Jewish Community of Montenegro. (Larry Luxner)
“I am waiting for the Montenegrin government to take action,” Edelkopf told JTA from his Podgorica synagogue, which was previously a private house. “Until now, they have not offered any official response.”
Despite the recent hostilities, the rabbi said, Montenegro has long welcomed Israeli tourists as well as residents. And Jews have been living here for millennia before Yugoslavia existed.
Ruins dating from the 4th century C.E. indicate a flourishing Jewish community in Kotor, not far from Budva along the Adriatic. In fact, one of the country’s most important religious sites is the presumed tomb of Shabbatai Zvi, located in nearby Ulcinj. The 17th-century Jewish false messiah died shortly after his exile there in 1673 by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of the present-day Balkans.
While most Montenegrins are Eastern Orthodox Christians, about 20% are Muslims of either Bosnian or Albanian origin. In 1992, after communism collapsed and Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia broke away from the former Yugoslavia, the remaining two republics — Serbia and Montenegro — created the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
In 2006, Montenegro declared independence following a referendum on the issue, and six years later, then-Prime Minister Igor Lukšić granted Judaism recognition as the country’s fourth official religion, alongside the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church and Islam.
“The Jews are very well accepted here,” said Nikolla Camaj, vice-president of Montenegro’s parliament and one of five ethnic Albanians in the 81-member body. “Officially we have very good relations with Israel, and people support the idea that Israel must be protected. But there’s a problem because in Montenegro we have a lot of Muslims — Albanians and Bosniaks — and they don’t like what’s happening in Palestine.”
A pro-Palestinian mural painted on the side of a Podgorica apartment building has been the site of multiple pro-Palestinian rallies in Montenegro. (Larry Luxner)
In Podgorica, a huge mural painted on an apartment building two blocks from the municipal bus terminal depicts Gazan refugee children, a slice of watermelon symbolizing the Palestinian resistance, and the declaration “Montenegro Stands With Palestine.”
In early July, Israeli tourists visiting Plav — a resort town near Montenegro’s borders with Kosovo and Albania — were harassed by a local couple, who called the visitors “baby killers.”
That doesn’t surprise Edelkopf at all.
“Local people are being fed articles translated from very strong anti-Israel news outlets,” the rabbi said. “The main TV channels and online portals here are filled with lies and garbage against Israel, and the people have started to believe that Israel is committing genocide.”
Even so, Israeli tourists keep coming. In 2025, according to official figures, 110,249 of them visited Montenegro — up from 73,513 the year before — most of them via direct flights from Tel Aviv. A Facebook group for Israelis planning trips to Montenegro has more than 80,000 members, who swap advice and share photos and tips from their trips.
A citizen of Montenegro beats a pot next to a placard reading “Zionism Is Not Dead Yet, And We Don’t Know When It Will Be” that features a swastika inside a Jewish star during a pro-Palestinian rally in Podgorica, Sept. 14, 2025. (Savo Prelevic / AFP via Getty Images)
Israel has no embassy in this country; instead, it’s represented by Avivit Bar-Ilan, Israel’s resident ambassador in Serbia, who could not be reached for comment.
Montenegro’s few Jews are split between Edelkopf’s traditional Orthodox Jewish synagogue and the local progressive Jewish congregation led by its president, Nina Ofner Bokan.
A computer science engineer, Ofner Bokan, 41, has represented her community since 2020. Last September, she was reelected unanimously for a five-year term. She’s also senior advisor to the president of the Montenegrin parliament, and a vice-president of the World Jewish Congress.
“We feel very protected here, and we have an amazing relationship with all the other religious communities,” Ofner Bokan said. “Over the years, we’ve made strong connections. … Jews can walk with a kippah or a Star of David without any problem.”
Last October the community held its 12th annual Mahar conference in Budva, which featured speeches by several dignitaries including Deputy Prime Minister Budimir Aleksić.
Nina Ofner Bokan, president of the Jewish community of Montenegro, is also vice president of the World Jewish Congress and senior advisor to the president of the Montenegrin Parliament. (Larry Luxner)
“Montenegro is recognized as a country that cherishes diversity, fosters dialogue, and stands as a nation where the Holocaust did not occur and where antisemitism has never had — and will never have — any foundation,” Aleksić assured his audience. “We are proud of that fact.”
Ofner Bokan’s Jewish congregation was founded in 2011, and she is its third president. In November 2024, she and other local Jews held a ceremony to mark the groundbreaking of the first purpose-built synagogue in Montenegrin history. Ar Ashem is slowly taking shape on a donated plot of land fronting Radosava Burića Street, she said, and will be finished in February.
With around 150 active members, the congregation’s spiritual leader is Luciano Moše Prelevic, who, like Edelkopf, claims to be Montenegro’s chief rabbi. The two communities have nothing to do with each other — and that hasn’t changed even with a recent influx of Jews from warring Russia and Ukraine.
“Ours is the one that signed the contract in 2012 with the government recognizing the Jewish community,” said Ofner Bokan, whose parents were from the Serbian city of Novi Sad. “But in public, Jews are not going to talk badly about each other. If we do, then what will other people think?”
A sign at the construction site of Montenegro’s new Jewish cultural center, as seen in April 2026, shows that it is planned for completion in November 2026. (Larry Luxner)
Edelkopf, who with his wife Chana has eight children, spent 17 years in Russia running the Chabad outpost in Sochi. But he was deported in March 2017 after a Russian court determined that he was a “threat to national security” and came directly to Montenegro.
“We are officially the Religious Jewish Community of Montenegro,” he said, while acknowledging deep divisions among the Jews of this relatively tiny country. “We do have things we need to improve, and we are not proud of that.”
One relative newcomer is Tatiana Nirman, who is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia. Soon after the war with Ukraine broke out in February 2022, she moved to Montenegro and now directs cultural programming for the 150 or so Jews she estimates now live in Budva, the resort town where the brawl took place.
“We’re here in Montenegro because it’s a beautiful, comfortable country, and one of the few places we could come on a Russian passport,” said Nirman, 40, who lives in the coastal town with her husband and two children. She adds that about 80% of her programs on art, music, Jewish history and cooking are in the Russian language.
Also living in Budva is Anna Davidi, 51, an Armenian-born Jew whose ancestors were from Iran. During the Nagorno-Karabakh War of the 1990s, Davidi’s family moved to Ukraine, where she studied music in Khmelnytskyi.
She married a Jewish man from Breslov with whom she had a son and daughter, but later divorced and relocated to Montenegro after realizing there was little to keep her in Ukraine.
“What attracted me was Montenegro’s exceptionally clean and beautiful nature, and the high level of tolerance among its people,” said Davidi, who moved here in 2012. “My brother, his wife and I came to Montenegro simply to explore it as a possible place to live. And almost from the moment we arrived, we fell in love.”
A former fashion designer and restaurant owner with a degree in psychology, Davidi landed a job in real-estate upon moving to Montenegro, and now represents an Israeli company involved in land sales. She said she sees both Montenegro and Israel, where she travels regularly to see her children and grandchildren, as important stops on her Jewish journey.
“When I look back, I see that my long road toward Israel has passed through several countries and generations: my ancestors came from Iran; I was born in Armenia; from there I moved to Ukraine; from there I moved to Montenegro,” Davidi recalled. “I hope that my next destination — perhaps the final station on this long journey — will be Jerusalem.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Montenegro’s tiny Jewish community navigates uncertain territory as hostility toward Israel increases appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israeli court delays Ben-Gvir’s plans for an Israeli ‘Crocodile Alcatraz’
(JTA) — An animal welfare group’s appeal to an Israeli court is delaying plans to surround a high security prison for Palestinians with Nile crocodiles.
The proposed 560-foot moat was first floated by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in December. If built, it would surround a special wing at Ketziot Prison in southern Israel holding Palestinian security prisoners, including members of Hamas’ Nukhba force who took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.
“Anyone who murdered, massacred and raped and behaved like an animal deserves to be guarded by an animal just like them,” a statement from Ben-Gvir’s ministry said at the time.
The project moved forward last month after Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman reclassified crocodiles from protected wildlife to “tended wild animals,” allowing security agencies to house them at their facilities. Her nod came despite objections from Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority and her ministry’s legal adviser, who said Silman did not have the required legal authority to make the reclassification..
After Silman’s announcement, Ben-Gvir shared an AI-generated image of himself petting a crocodile on a leash alongside the caption, “Are you thinking of attempting to escape? Think again.”
Let the Animals Live, an animal welfare group, petitioned against Silman’s decision. The Jerusalem District Court on Aug. 2 issued a temporary order barring the crocodiles’ transfer. The state has until Aug. 16 to respond.
The petition argues that using crocodiles as prison guards would cause the animals severe suffering, removing them from an environment not amenable to their thriving, and could endanger both the public and the reptiles. Let the Animals Live also contends that Silman lacked the authority to create what amounts to a new legal category for wildlife through a ministerial declaration rather than legislation.
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority said in a statement that there was no sufficient professional basis for using crocodiles at security facilities and warned that the plan posed significant risks to public safety, the environment and the animals’ welfare, including the possibility that the crocodiles could escape.
Ben-Gvir accused the court of siding with terrorists after the injunction was issued. “Once again the legal system is on the side of the terrorists and against the people of Israel,” he wrote on social media.
His ministry has allocated 21 million shekels, about $7 million, for the project, according to Channel 12 News. The plans include provisions for feeding and caring for the crocodiles, as well as specially designed resting areas.
The proposal was inspired by Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” the remote migrant detention center promoted by the Trump administration. Unlike Ben-Gvir’s plan, animals were not brought to the Florida facility or kept as a man-made security barrier. Officials instead pointed to the alligators, crocodiles and pythons already inhabiting the surrounding Everglades as a deterrent to escape. Florida shut down Alligator Alcatraz in June because of difficulties meeting operational costs. It also faced lawsuits.
Senior Israel Prison Service officials visited the Hamat Gader crocodile farm in January to learn how the animals are kept in captivity.
Yosi Mousanejad, the Hamat Gader site’s manager, told Channel 14 that the delegation came “to study” the animals. They appeared not to know that crocodiles are largely inactive during the winter, he said, a factor that could limit their effectiveness as a year-round security measure.
Mousanejad also told the Kan broadcaster that he had no intention of supplying any of the farm’s roughly 200 crocodiles to the prison system.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli court delays Ben-Gvir’s plans for an Israeli ‘Crocodile Alcatraz’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
This Jewish museum is lending art across America — with one condition
Take a stroll through the Cleveland Museum of Art. Look closely in the Korean art galleries, and you will find a Jewish ritual spice container.
Among its collection of Italian Baroque art, you’ll stumble upon a marble Jewish marriage panel.
In the Middle East galleries, 19th-century Torah finials from Tbilisi, Georgia, blend seamlessly with the Islamic art that surrounds them.
Until recently, none of those objects were there. Like many art and history museums across the U.S., Cleveland had almost no Jewish ceremonial art on display. The few that do often display it in separate galleries exclusively reserved for Jewish art.
Now, Cleveland is just one of about a dozen museums across the country participating in a quiet initiative led by New York’s Jewish Museum, which is lending works from its collection to institutions that have little or no Jewish works on view. The Jewish Museum has one condition: don’t put them in a Judaica gallery.
“Jewish culture exists because for 3,500 years it’s been wandering the global diaspora,” said James Snyder, the director of the Jewish Museum, the art museum at the helm of the initiative. “How it looks is a function of its engagement, not its disengagement.”
An Iraqi menorah adorned with peacocks belongs in a Middle East gallery, he argues, where visitors can see that the peacock was a common decorative motif across the region’s art, regardless of religion. A German Torah crown belongs among European decorative arts to tell the story about how, for centuries, Jewish ceremonial silver was largely crafted by non-Jewish silversmiths after Jews were barred from joining silver-making guilds.
20th century. Courtesy of The Jewish Museum
Bill Griswold, the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, told the Forward that while the museum has had significant collections of Islamic, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu works, it “didn’t have a single important object of Jewish ceremonial art.” This, despite the fact that Cleveland has one of the country’s largest Jewish populations.
At the Toledo Museum of Art, curator Robert Schindler said there was “exactly zero Judaica” there until November 2025, when the museum purchased a rare 12th-century Afghan kiddush cup for $4 million — a record price for Judaica. The Toledo museum also joined the Jewish Museum’s lending initiative; a 13th-century synagogue inscription from Cairo will be displayed in a gallery that intends to compare different world religions.
“It’s a gap in the collection, and it’s a gap in the stories and narratives that we’re telling,” said Schindler. “This is sort of a very active way of trying to reckon with, and also make up for some of the things that we just didn’t collect previously.”
Jewish Museum curator Danny Smith-Salfati calls the partnerships “artistic interventions,” each one tailor-made. Staff from the Jewish Museum work alongside local curators to identify objects that naturally fit within existing galleries. They also train docents on the Jewish significance of the objects and how they fit into the historical narrative of the gallery where they are placed.
Museum directors say the response has been overwhelmingly positive. At the Detroit Institute of Arts, hundreds of visitors have shown up for events dedicated to the viewing of objects that include one of the oldest known Torah shields in the world and a casket from the 15th century adorned with zodiac symbols.
Judith Dolkart, the museum’s deputy director, said the interest has prompted the museum to think seriously about adding Jewish ceremonial art to its permanent collection.
Griswold said the Cleveland museum has welcomed more guests in this calendar year than in recent history, a surge he attributes in large part to interest in the works on loan from the Jewish Museum.
“When I’ve been in the galleries, and these works have been on view, there have been people gathered around these vitrines [glass cases], fascinated to discover something really new in the context of our collection,” he said.
Snyder began his tenure at the Jewish Museum in October 2023, just three weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. He found himself navigating a moment of extraordinary tension. Museums across the country are still wrestling with pressure to take a stance on the conflict, confronting challenges such as disputes over public-facing staff members wearing keffiyehs to work and protests and vandalism tied to accusations that museum officials were providing support to Israel during the Gaza War. Jewish museums were not immune to that strife. According to a survey by the Council of American Jewish Museums, 81% of Jewish museums in North America and Europe reported antisemitic or anti-Israel harassment after Oct. 7.
“Museum staff were making statements that were shifting to the left, and shifting to pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli,” Snyder said. “Museum boards were shifting the other way: pro-Israeli, shocked, horrified, and that was producing conflict in museums … it was in every museum in town.”
Once he took the helm, Snyder created a post-Oct. 7 action plan to help the Jewish Museum navigate the moment, which included a directors’ talk series and an educational program for staff on the Middle East, racism and antisemitism, and exhibits about the traumas of the war. He also thought hard about the museum’s approach to curation, seeking to explicitly draw connections between Jewish objects and the places and cultures in which they developed.
“A culturally specific museum is segregating itself,” he explained. “What you need to do is show that Jewish culture has been in the global diaspora longer than any other single culture for 3,500 years, demonstrating resilience and engagement worldwide.”
Suddenly, Snyder began receiving calls from directors of encyclopedic museums across the country. How could they build a collection of Jewish art and artifacts in their spaces?
His answer was blunt. “You really can’t today,” he told them. Most major Judaica already belongs to museums or private collectors, and when important objects do come to market, private buyers often outbid institutions, he said. Instead, he offered them another solution: borrow from the Jewish Museum.
“Take a dozen from us and don’t put them in a room,” Snyder recalled telling museum directors. “Sprinkle them. Take something from the Italian Renaissance, German Baroque, British Imperial, American Colonial, Asian…”
Smith-Salfati says this initiative fulfills part of the Jewish Museum’s mandate.
“We’re introducing Jewish material and Jewish concepts and Jewish ideas that are not widely known,” he said. “And debunking myths about what Judaism is and looks like.”
Snyder agrees.
“We see part of our job as dispersing Jewish culture across the landscape of our own American diaspora,” Snyder said. “It’s what we feel is our mandate — and one that’s all the more relevant because of the times we’re in.”
The post This Jewish museum is lending art across America — with one condition appeared first on The Forward.
