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Installation of the showcases for the exhibition “The Whole Truth”
© Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Michal Friedlander

The exhibition “The Whole Truth … everything you always wanted to know about Jews” opens in a few days. The curatorial team steps back to admire the showcases and compliment one another on a job well done.

Not quite. Let me guide you through my afternoon.

13:45    After returning our food trays in the Mensa, there is a rush for the freezer box containing ice cream. Avoiding the crush, I make for the candy stand. Deliberations. I confer with my colleagues. M & Ms, Toblerone and Rittersport. Wrappers are discarded before we have even left the room.

Installation of the showcases for the exhibition “The Whole Truth”
© Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Michal Friedlander

14:00    I scroll through the 13 page document listing the questions asked by museum visitors. The questions relate to Jews, Judaism and the Jewish Museum Berlin. Many repetitions. The list needs to be tidied up for exhibition use. A few samples:

Why are there so many Jewish museums and who pays for it all?
Are Jews normal?
Do Jews have horns?
Why do Jews think they are so special?
Why don’t all Jews live in Israel?
Why didn’t Jews defend themselves against the Nazis?
…?

Time for another sugar inhalation. (more…)

The exhibition “The Whole Truth … everything you always wanted to know about Jews” opens next week. The curatorial team steps back to admire the showcases and compliment one another on a job well done.

Not quite. Let me guide you through my morning.

8:45    Arrive at office and stack my drawers with the healthy snacks I have purchased: bananas, apples and organic crispy wafers.

Unpacking the “Smash-Me Bernie” Madoff figurine, manufacturer: Modelworks © photo: Michal Friedlander, Jewish Museum Berlin

8:50    Walk over to the galleries to view the showcases, which need to be placed in their final positions this morning.

9:00    Galleries eerily empty. Project manager cheerfully mentions that there is snow on the Autobahn from Dresden to Berlin. A few showcases have made it through, but their legs are on the Autobahn. Will call when legs arrive.

9:10    Back to office. Time to authorize the final release of the exhibition texts for production. Make good progress. A colleague pops her head in and glances at the samples in my hand. She points her Smartphone at the texts that are printed on a color background. “Just as I suspected,” she announces, “the English texts cannot be seen by a color-bind visitor.” “How do you know?” (more…)

They betray the hopes, dreams, and projections of fathers and mothers,they follow trends, and foretell the future of their bearers.
For Jews many decisions are connected to the naming of a child: should the name underscore his religious affiliation, only be recognizable to other Jews, or neither? Will it be a name native to the family’s country of origin or to the child’s country of birth? Has the name been translated? Does it memorialize someone? Colleagues and friends of the Jewish Museum Berlin share their thoughts with this blog, on this and other questions.

Miriam dancing © Miriam Lubrich

Miriam / Mirjam
Soon there will be four women working along the hallway that my office is on, who all have the same first name that I have: Mirjam or, in some cases, Miriam. Even while the etymology is not completely unambiguous, the triumphant prophetess with the timbrel is namesake to each of us – that Miriam who roused the women to dance a dance of joy after the Israelites had fled from Egypt and divided the Red Sea (2. Moses 14, 20). With that, the sister of Moses and Aron took her rightful place among scripture’s female figures – women like both of the wives of the first man Adam, Lillith and Eve – who showed their rebellious traits: Miriam asserted the claim that God also spoke through her. She was consequently struck with a skin rash and had to wait for seven days outside of the encampment before she was allowed to live among the congregation of her desert-crossing brethren (4. Moses 12, 1-16).

Is it an accident that this combative woman lent her name to so many employees of the Jewish Museum Berlin? (more…)