Yeshiva University Museum

This poster honoring Pauline Dolinsky is dated December 26, 1918, just over two decades after the founding of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS). Its highly stylized text contains a resolution passed jointly by the Women's Branch of Yeshivat Rabbi Yizchak Elchonan [sic] and the Ladies' Kohl [sic] Aid Society to honor the hard work of their shared president, Pauline Dolinsky.

This summer, I worked as a student assistant for Yeshiva University Museum. The Museum and its staff are important contributors to the study and preservation of Jewish history. I had the opportunity to acquire insights into both the development of museum exhibitions and the professional world of those people devoted to the study of Jewish artifacts.

With travel starting up again after pandemic restrictions, I would like to take you on a virtual trip to Israel, illustrated with objects from our collection. The trip will take a century. We will travel by multiple types of conveyance (train, ship, and plane), and bring back a variety of souvenirs.

Scarf Artist: Clara Gardon New York City, 1953 Silk, hand painted Collection of Yeshiva University Museum. Gift of the Artist.

Since most summer camps are currently closed, I thought it might be refreshing to share some of the artifacts in our collection relating to summer experiences of the past.

Laurence Goodstein and friends, Camp Oneida, Pennsylvania ca. 1915 gift of Dr. and Mrs. Laurence M. Lerner

One week after the holiday of Shavuot, we’ll mark the 53rd anniversary of a remarkable day – June 7, 1967 – when Israeli paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem and reached Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, an area that had been off limits to Jewish people since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Despite appeals by Israel to stay out of the Six-Day War, Jordanian forces had attacked Israeli cities, including sites in Jerusalem, leaving Israel no choice but to fight back. I remember that day vividly ...

Here in the U.S., my seventh-grade classmates and I were allowed to bring small radios to class so that we could listen to the news from Israel. We cried through morning prayers. We feared for the safety of Israel's leaders, of family and friends who lived there, and mostly of the brave soldiers. We never dreamed that our prayers would be answered by a seemingly miraculous reunification of Jerusalem. As we listened to the news reports, we looked at each other with an increasing sense of ecstatic but cautious disbelief.

In honor of Yom Ha'atzmaut, take a virtual tour of our exhibiition "From A to Z" with Tablet Magazine's Liel Leibovitz:

Oliver O’Connor Barrett, Homage to the State of Israel, study dated June 8, 1948. Collection of Yeshiva University Museum; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Selig Burrows.

This is the seventh consecutive week we’re unable to welcome visitors in person at Yeshiva University Museum. It’s also marked by two extraordinary days, Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) and Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day), which, linked back-to-back, help bring alive to Israelis that the very existence of the state was made possible by those who sacrificed their lives for it.

I am writing this on a Wednesday, and if this were a normal Wednesday, I would be at Yeshiva University Museum (YUM) in the Center for Jewish History, in our basement work room, sewing (by hand). I think back to the 1926 robe de style that I had begun conserving, the binder on exhibition that will need re-rolling, and the everyday maintenance we do for the costumes and textiles in the Museum's collection.

While we prepare for Passover 6 or more feet away from one another, we can longingly appreciate this David Dzienciarski painting of a Market before Passover from Yeshiva University Museum’s collection (gift of the artist’s estate). Created around 1970, the work depicts a crowded street in the Jewish section of Lodz, reimagined from the artist’s childhood. Pre-Passover activities are proceeding apace. Two men shoulder a cask of boiling water on a pole (the water would have been used to kasher dishes and utensils for the holiday); a rag seller offers up new plates in exchange for old clothes; shoppers go this way and that carrying their sacks and baskets; while children, oblivious to the surrounding chaos, roll hoops and play in between the harried adult bodies.

As richly evocative as the scene is, the painting is as far removed from documentary reality as we all currently are from our places of business and communal gathering. Dzienciarski (1912-1980), who miraculously survived World War II – first, as a member of the Polish army and then as a German prisoner – managed to escape eastward through the Russian frontier before making his way in 1948 to Israel, where he settled. This work was painted by the artist among tens of others while living in the new Jewish homeland decades after the leveling of the Lodz Ghetto and the decimation of European Jewry.

The son of a lumber and furniture merchant who traveled between Polish towns and villages by motorbike, Dzienciarski considered his paintings a mixture of observation and imagination:
“They are partially a documentary record and partially a personal vision depicting a way of life, which was suddenly erased and which tragically can never again exist. There is something in my paintings to which all can relate, but I believe they will have the greatest impact on the generations of young people who want to know what the Holocaust destroyed.” He viewed them as his life’s most important achievement, serving to make manifest for future generations a culture that no longer existed.

Market before Passover was exhibited among 35 works by the artist in a monographic show called “In My Mind’s Eye: Jewish Life in Lodz, 1920-1939,” presented by Yeshiva University Museum in 1980, around the time of the artist’s death. You get a sense of Dzienciarski’s creative relationship to observed reality from a photograph in YIVO’s collection showing Koshering Dishes for Passover in Lodz around 1920, when the artist lived there as a child (Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York).

Perhaps we can take inspiration and derive strength from such a monumental and vital act of artistic preservation, re-creation and forward-looking-ness. Market Before Passover provides an imaginative window on another time and place, which is most welcome in the here and now, and could also helpfully remind us to avoid the crowds.

In the summer of 2019 I had the invaluable opportunity to do an internship at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York in fulfillment of requirements for my Masters degree in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice at FIT. Wanting to work with a collection dedicated to the preservation, study and exhibition of a broad spectrum of textile objects of the Jewish heritage, I came to the internship in order to see, touch, explore and contribute to the care of what I felt has yet to be given its fullest due attention in the narrative of world object history.

When we think of Rosh Hashanah

When we think of Rosh Hashanah, many of us think of the sound of the shofar, a literal blast from the remote past of Judaism, a time when musical instruments were in their infancy. It is a primal sound, heard through the centuries, calling the Jewish people.

It is with profound sadness that the staff, board and community of Yeshiva University Museum mourn the death of Dr. Vivian Mann, a teacher, scholar and friend, who brought enlightenment, creativity and deep respect for tradition to the study and appreciation of Jewish art and culture. While we are depleted by the loss of Vivian’s insightful eye, sharp mind and expansive vision of Jewish life and history, we will forever be strengthened and enriched by her research, exhibitions, students, and ideas. We extend our deepest sympathies to the members of Vivian’s devoted family. May they be strengthened by her remarkable legacy and comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. May her memory be a blessing. Baruch Dayan Ha’emet.

These little figurines, approximately 5-7 inches high, are a hot topic in biblical archaeology.

Sukkah decoration (details) by Siegmund Forst (1904-2006). Produced by the Spero Foundation. New York, ca. 1965. Collection of Yeshiva University Museum, Gift of Lynn Broide

In an attempt to gain as much experience as possible for a potential career in museology, I, Marc Fishkind, a rising Junior at the Frisch High School, had the privilege of embarking upon a five week “course” at the Yeshivah University Museum in an attempt to know what it’s really like to curate a museum. Under the guidance of Bonni-Dara Michaels I was given many tasks, from the mundane to the unexpected, that truly illustrated how much thought and work goes into every little detail within a museum. With the learning of a new computer program, hours of filing under my belt, and even practicing a mini lecture, I believe I have come out of this experience with a plethora of more knowledge and experience than when I began.

Wandering in our painting storage area this morning, I passed a painting by A. Raymond Katz depicting the production of matzah, and started thinking about the different ways artists have portrayed Passover. I thought you might enjoy it if I shared four examples from our collection that together illustrate Passover in a way you might not have considered before.