This miniature steamroller by the artist Avi Biran is put to work in the ritual search for leavened grain. If chametz is found in the house, it can literally make it flat as a pancake, Jerusalem 2008; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe. You can find this and other objects related in our German-language collection database.
The time before Passover always seems a bit chaotic to me. Jerusalem looks a little like a German city just before Christmas. Everyone has off work and is busy preparing for the holiday: there is a lot to buy for the seder evening, and many people buy new clothing to look sharp for the family dinner. In homes and buildings across the city, rags, brooms, and vacuums flail frantically. This spring cleaning has a religious motivation:→ continue reading
Tel Aviv, Purim 2017; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Franziska Schurr
Sometimes fate is a matter of drawing lots. The well-being of a minority group in the larger society comes down to politics. Purim, the feast of lots, commemorates a queen who was able to distinguish fate from political intrigue.→ continue reading
Christmas and Hanukkah have quite a lot in common: Candles are lit at both festivals to brighten up the dark season; both festivals fall on the 25th day of a month – Christmas on 25 December and Hanukkah on 25 Kislew, the ninth month of the Jewish calendar; and both are still traditional, family celebrations which have become festivals of consumerism.
The staff of the Jewish Museum Berlin didn’t want to choose between latkes and gingerbread and celebrated the “greatest superholiday known to mankind”:
Character Seth Cohen on the television series The O.C.
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