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The Jewish Museum has just completed a major renovation. Here are 7 highlights.
Following a yearlong, $14.5 million renovation, the Jewish Museum — which is housed a 1908 French Gothic mansion on Fifth Avenue — is opening two upgraded floors to the public.
Among the new features on the museum’s reimagined third and fourth floors: a new installation, “Identity, Culture and Community: Stories from the Collections of the Jewish Museum,” which spotlights 200 items from the museum’s permanent collection; four galleries for rotating exhibits and new acquisitions and the Pruzan Family Center for Learning, featuring art-making studios, a touch wall, and an interactive, simulated archaeological dig.
The renovation is the brainchild of the museum’s director, James Snyder, who assumed the helm of the 121-year-old institution in November 2023, following stints as the director of the Israel Museum and deputy director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The renovation “gave us the opportunity to think through an entirely new narrative, an entirely new strategy for what we are all about,” Snyder said during a press event on Tuesday.
“These are complex times — they have been for a while. They’re getting more and more complex every day,” Snyder said. “Our job, particularly for culturally specific museums like this one, is to be the antidote to what’s really a pandemic today — to the xenophobia, the racism, the ignorance that is prevalent everywhere now.”
Here are seven things to see and do at the renovated Jewish Museum’s new galleries.
1. Marc Chagall’s “Self-Portrait with Palette” (1917)
Marc Chagall’s “Self-Portrait with Palette” (1917) is among the new acquisitions at the Jewish Museum. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
This self-portrait by the lauded Jewish artist is in the Cubist style. An oil on canvas, the painting shows Chagall as a young man holding a brush and palette, with his hometown of Vitebsk (in today’s Belarus) in the background.
When the portrait was painted — during the Russian Revolution — Chagall had just returned home after three years at a Parisian art school in order to marry his childhood sweetheart, Bella Rosenfeld, who modeled for many of his works.
The painting, a new acquisition by the museum, was previously in a private collection. It was last publicly exhibited at the Tefaf New York art fair at the Park Avenue Armory in 2022. It hangs “in conversation” with a newly acquired piece by Alice Neel, titled “Nazis Murder Jews,” from 1936, an unusually non-abstract work by Mark Rothko that shows a deconstructed crucifix, and three paintings by Romanian-Israeli painter Reuven Rubin.
2. 130+ Hanukkah lamps, from ancient times to the present
A glass case of more than 130 Hanukkah lamps is part of the Jewish Museum’s identity and culture exhibit, drawn from the museum’s collection. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
The Jewish Museum has more than 1,400 Hanukkah menorahs in its collection, and as part of its new, fourth-floor learning center, more than 130 are on display in a space that is open to a double-height gallery on the third floor.
The installation — featuring menorahs from across the globe, antiquity to the present day — is meant to accentuate “the central meaning of light as a symbol of enlightenment and hope across cultures,” per a press release.
Particular highlights include oil lamps from the 2nd to 1st century BCE, as well as a “Menurkey” — a turkey-shaped menorah, devised by 9-year-old Asher Weintraub in 2013, when Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlapped for the first time since 1888.
3. “The Return of the Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs” (1833–34) by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim
‘The Return of the Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs” by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim. (Courtesy The Jewish Museum)
Considered to be the first Jewish painter in the modern era, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim — born in 1800 in Hanau, Germany — is known for being the first Jew to receive a formal arts education in Europe.
Many of Oppenheim’s works — which are on view at the museum as part of its permanent collection — showcase intimate portraits of Jewish life in Europe. Considered his masterpiece, “The Return of the Volunteer,” depicts a young German Jewish man returning home after helping defend Germany against the Napoleonic armies just as his family is welcoming Shabbat. (Note the challah and kiddush cup on the table.)
Oppenheim created the painting during a time of civil unrest following the 1830 revolutions in France, when some German states passed repressive legislation against the Jews. Per the Jewish Museum, “This painting has been interpreted as a reminder to Germans of the significant role played by Jews in the Wars of Liberation, and its political overtones are unusual in the generally apolitical nature of Biedermeier art.”
4. Letters between George Washington and Moses Seixas
A letter exchange between Touro Synagogue president Moses Seixas and American President George Washington. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
Part of the new “Identity, Culture and Community” exhibit is a section on Jews in the Colonial Era. A highlight here are letters from 1790 between new American President George Washington and Moses Seixas, the president of Jeshuat Israel of Newport, Rhode Island, now known as the Touro Synagogue — the oldest synagogue in the United States.
Washington came to Rhode Island after the state ratified the United States Constitution in order to promote the passing of the Bill of Rights; upon Washington’s arrival in Newport, Seixas read a letter aloud to the president, in which he expressed optimism at the freedom of religion that Americans would see in this new country.
“May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants —,” Washington wrote in response, adding a quotation from scripture, “while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
The letters are so delicate they’re kept under a window blind that visitors manually pull up and down, to minimize exposure to light.
5. A child-friendly mock archaeology dig
Visitors of all ages can dig for replicas of real ancient artifacts in the Jewish Museum’s newly renovated dig room. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
As part of the Pruzan Family Center for Learning, the Jewish Museum’s new mock archeology dig is three times larger than the previous version. Here, as part of the visitors can dig through four pits, each centered around a different era in time, for replicas of real artifacts, such as an Ottoman-era copper alloy coffeepot from Jerusalem, an ancient Roman oil lamp and a calcite-alabaster jar from ancient Egypt circa 1550 BCE.
The real versions of those artifacts — most of them newly on display in the room — are also on display, accompanied by kid-friendly language. Families are provided with an “Archaeologist’s Notebook” to keep track of their finds.
6. “in full command of every plan you wrecked” (2024) by Zoë Buckman
“in full command of every plan you wrecked” by Zoë Buckman is on view at the Jewish Museum as part of the third floor’s rotating exhibitions. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
Zoë Buckman, 40, is a British Jewish artist whose work has been featured in the UK’s National Portrait Gallery and who has emerged as a prominent voice among artists on antisemitism in the wake of the Gaza war. This ink, acrylic and hand-embroidered piece is Buckman’s debut at the Jewish Museum, which is part of her “Who by Fire” series exploring Jewish personhood.
Located on a third-floor gallery, Buckman’s work depicts a woman sitting on a chair; the piece’s name, “in full command of every plan you wrecked,” a reference to a Leonard Cohen lyric from “Alexandra Leaving.” The loose threads — typically found on the back of such woven pieces — subvert expectations of traditional feminine and domestic textile work.
7. A retrospective on the early works of Anish Kapoor
Some of the early sculptural pigment works of Anish Kapoor at the Jewish Museum. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
Born in India in 1954 to a Punjabi Hindu father and an Iraqi Jewish mother from Mumbai, Anish Kapoor rose to prominence as an artist exploring matter, non-matter, space and voids. “Anish Kapoor: Early Works,” on view until Feb. 26, 2026, is the first American museum presentation showcasing Kapoor’s works from the late 1970s and early 1980s, “when he was still the classic starving artist,” per the New York Times.
Snyder and Kapoor — a winner of the prestigious Genesis Prize — have previously collaborated on exhibits at MoMA and the Israel Museum; the Jewish Museum exhibit opens on Friday alongside the museum’s newly reimagined floors. “He is about this narrative of the experience of the Diaspora and what it does to artists,” Snyder said of Kapoor.
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The post The Jewish Museum has just completed a major renovation. Here are 7 highlights. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New CD of Yiddish children’s songs by Vilna-born composer David Botwinik
A new CD was released this year of delightful Yiddish children’s songs, composed by the Vilna-born musician David Botwinik who died in 2022 at the age of 101.
The album, Zumer iz shoyn vider do, which translates to “Summer is finally here again”, was compiled by Botwinik’s son, Sender Botwinik. It features 36 tracks of melodies composed by David Botwinik set to the works of various Yiddish poets, including David Botwinik himself.
The text and music for most of the songs were originally published in Botwinik’s seminal songbook, From Holocaust to Life, published in 2010 by the League for Yiddish. On this new CD, these songs are brought to life through the voices of both children and adults, with Sender Botwinik on the piano; Ken Richmond on violin; Shira Shazeer on accordion, and Richmond and Shazeer’s son Velvel on trombone.
These recordings are valuable not only for people familiar with the Yiddish language and culture, but also for others looking for resources and inspiration. Singers, music teachers, choir conductors and Yiddish language students will find a treasure trove of songs about the Jewish holidays, family, nature and celebration.
Born in Vilna in 1920, composer David Botwinik’s life was filled with music and creativity from his earliest years. As a young child, he would walk with his father to hear the cantors at the Vilna shtotshul — the main synagogue in what is now Vilnius, Lithuania.
At age 11, he became a khazndl, a colloquial Yiddish term for a child cantor, performing in several synagogues in Vilna. At 12, he composed his first melodies. Later he undertook advanced musical study in Rome.
In 1956, he settled in Montreal, soon to become a leading figure in the city’s thriving Yiddish cultural scene. He worked as a music teacher, choir director, writer and publisher. As he wrote in From Holocaust to Life, he sought, most of all, to “encourage maintaining Yiddish as a living language.”
There are many standout pieces on the CD, but I want to point out several whose lyrics, in addition to the melody, were written by David Botwinik himself. “Zumer” (Summer), the first song on the recording, gives the CD its title. In a Zoom interview with Sender and his wife, Naomi, they said that “Zumer” won first prize in a Jewish song competition in Canada in 1975, and that he remembered singing in his father’s choir for the competition.
“Zumer” is a jaunty earworm that opens with a recording of David Botwinik reading the lyrics, followed by the song itself, performed by a magnificent chorus of children from four Yiddish-speaking families who met years ago at the annual Yiddish Vokh retreat in Copake, New York.
Another standout song is “Shabes-lid” (Sabbath Song) which David Botwinik’s grandchild Dina Malka Botwinik sings with a pure, other-worldly sound:
Sholem-aleykhem, shabes-lebn,
Brengen ru hot dikh Got gegebn,
Ale mide tsu baglikn,
Likht un freyd zey shikn.
“Sholem-aleykhem, shabes shenster,”
Shvebt a gezang durkh ale fentster,
Shabes shenster, shabes libster,
Tayerer, heyliker du.
Welcome, dear Shabbos,
Given by God to bring us rest,
To gladden those who are tired
To send them light and joy,
Welcome loveliest Shabbos,
The song drifts from every window.
Loveliest Shabbat, dearest Shabbos
Precious holy one.
Sender Botwinik’s website also includes a track of the same song recorded in the 1960s by the late Cantor Louis Danto. Both recordings are deeply moving.
As we enter the Hanukkah season, I’d like to point out my current favorite of Botwinik’s work, “Haynt iz khanike bay undz” (“Today is Our Holiday, Hanukkah”). Botwinik composed the words and music to this song shortly before his 99th birthday in December 2019.
On the CD, we hear him performing the song for his fellow residents at the assisted living facility Manoir King David, in Cote Saint-Luc, Montreal, with harmonies and accompaniment later added by his son. The lyrics are accessible and the melody is catchy, with clever compositional twists and turns.
This new CD is a beautiful homage to an extraordinary musician and a welcome addition to the world of Yiddish song.
To purchase the album, Zumer iz shoyn vider do, email info@botwinikmusic.com.
The post New CD of Yiddish children’s songs by Vilna-born composer David Botwinik appeared first on The Forward.
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Chicago Man Pleads Guilty to Battering Jewish DePaul University Students
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas protesters setting up an encampment at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on May 5, 2024. Photo: Kyle Mazza via Reuters Connect
A Chicago-area man has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge he incurred last year for beating up Jewish pro-Israel students participating in a demonstration at DePaul University.
On Nov. 6, 2024, Adam Erkan, 20, approached Max Long and Michael Kaminsky in a ski mask while shouting antisemitic epithets and statements. He then attacked both students, fracturing Kaminsky’s wrist and inflicting a brain injury on Long, whom he pummeled into an unconscious state.
Law enforcement identified Erkan, who absconded to another location in a car, after his father came forward to confirm that it was his visage which surveillance cameras captured near the scene of the crime. According to multiple reports, the assailant avoided severer criminal penalties by agreeing to plead guilty to lesser offenses than the felony hate crime counts with which he was originally charged.
His accomplice, described as a man in his age group, remains at large.
“One attacker has now admitted guilt for brutally assaulting two Jewish students at DePaul University. That is a step toward justice, but it is nowhere near enough,” The Lawfare Project, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group which represented the Jewish students throughout the criminal proceedings, said in a statement responding to the plea deal. “The second attacker remains at large, and Max and Michael continue to experience ongoing threats. We demand — and fully expect — his swift arrest and prosecution to ensure justice for these students and for the Jewish community harmed by this antisemitic hate crime.”
Antisemitic incidents on US college campuses have exploded nationwide since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Just last month, members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which the advocacy group Students Supporting Israel had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The former soldiers agreed to meet Students Supporting Israel (SSI) to discuss their experiences at a “private space” on campus which had to be reserved because the university denied the group a room reservation and, therefore, security personnel that would have been afforded to it. However, someone leaked the event location, leading to one of the most violent incidents of campus antisemitism in recent memory.
By the time the attack ended, three people had been rushed to a local medical facility for treatment of injuries caused by a protester’s shattering the glazing of the venue’s door with a drill bit, a witness, student Ethan Elharrar, told The Algemeiner during an interview.
“One of the individuals had a weapon he used, a drill bit. He used it to break and shatter the door,” Elharrar said. “Two individuals were transported to the hospital because of this. One was really badly cut all his arms and legs, and he had to get stitches. Another is afraid to publicly disclose her injuries because she doesn’t want anything to happen to her.”
The previous month, masked pro-Hamas activists nearly raided an event held on the campus of Pomona College, based in Claremont, California, to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7. massacre.
Footage of the act which circulated on social media showed the group attempting to force its way into the room while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas dogma. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they mounted on their own as campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance.
Pomona College, working with its sister institutions in the Claremont consortium of liberal arts colleges in California (5C), later identified and disciplined some of the perpetrators and banned them from its campus.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, law enforcement personnel were searching for a man who trespassed the grounds of the Jewish Resource Center and kicked its door while howling antisemitic statements.
“F—k Israel, f—k the Jewish people,” the man — whom multiple reports describe as white, “college-age,” and possibly named “Jake” or “Jay” — screamed before running away. He did not damage the property, and he may have been accompanied by as many as two other people, one of whom shouted “no!” when he ran up to the building.
Around the same time, at Ohio State University, an unknown person or group tacked neo-Nazi posters across the campus which warned, “We are everywhere.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Lawmakers Advance Bill to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Organization
US Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) talks with reporters outside a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the US Capitol on Dec. 20, 2024. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday advanced legislation to designate the entire Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, continuing a bipartisan push in Washington to combat the global Islamist network.
Members of the committee voted to approve the bill on a bipartisan basis, with every Republican and several Democrats supporting the measure just over a week after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to determine whether to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
Notably, the legislation would require the US government to proscribe the Islamist network globally, while Trump’s order more narrowly directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report “on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.”
The legislation considered on Wednesday was spearheaded by Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).
“I am pleased that my bill to designate the entire Muslim Brotherhood globally as a terrorist organization has been approved by the full committee. This is a step in the right direction and further amplifies other efforts, like those of President Trump, to take decisive action against this insidious threat,” Diaz-Balart said in a statement.
“I thank Chairman [Rep. Brian Mast] for his leadership and the committee for advancing this bill to protect US national security interests and Americans by prohibiting US dollars from enabling the Muslim Brotherhood’s dangerous and pernicious activities while ensuring that MB members are blocked from entering the United States,” he continued.
Moskowitz similarly praised the committee for advancing the bill to a broader debate by the full House of Representatives.
“For decades, the Brotherhood has been tied to extremism and instability across the Middle East and around the world,” he said in a statement. “Other nations have already taken steps to investigate the Brotherhood and its affiliates, and the United States must have the authority to do the same.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational movement active in some 70 countries that preaches a vision of society governed by Sharia law, has been banned or designated as a terrorist group by several governments, including those in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has long been affiliated with the Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
The US House version of the bill blacklisting the Muslim Brotherhood, HR 4397, was introduced in July. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the companion Senate bill, S 2293, backed by a group of Republican co-sponsors. Together, the measures aim to push the president and secretary of state to identify the Brotherhood and all its branches worldwide as terrorist entities, a move that supporters say would close longstanding gaps in US counterterrorism policy and more closely align Washington’s stance with that of key Middle Eastern allies.
The legislation would expand the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 to explicitly include the Muslim Brotherhood, blocking its network from operating in the United States and imposing broad visa bans on individuals tied directly or indirectly to any of its global branches. The bill would require the State Department to map out every affiliated group worldwide and assess each for formal terrorist designation, effectively placing the entire Brotherhood ecosystem under unprecedented US scrutiny.
The measure outlines a direct connection between the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideological infrastructure and the terrorist groups it has inspired, including Hamas, whose terrorist activity remains at the forefront of US, Israeli, and European security concerns. Counterterrorism experts argue that targeting the Muslim Brotherhood’s sprawling network is an overdue step to combat the roots of Islamist extremism.
A recent report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) found that Qatar has funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over five decades as part of a coordinated, 100-year project to embed Muslim Brotherhood ideologies in the US.
The 200-page report, unveiled in Washington, DC to members of Congress, chronicles a 50-year effort by Brotherhood-linked groups to embed themselves in American academia, civil society, and government agencies, exposing what ISGAP calls the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” strategy, while maintaining an agenda fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic values.