An Unrealized Vision: The "American Jewish Historical Exhibition" of 1901–1902

Abstract

An Unrealized Vision:The "American Jewish Historical Exhibition" of 1901–19021 Jeffrey Shandler (bio) On June 27, 1901, the New York Times reported on "A Jewish Exhibition," planned to be presented "in this city during the Winter of 1901 and 1902" by the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), founded as a learned society in 1892. The committee appointed by AJHS to oversee the planning of the exhibition included "many prominent persons," among them Oscar Straus, Max Kohler, and Joseph Jacobs, all of New York; Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia; and others based in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Galveston, and San Francisco. Presiding over the committee was Cyrus Adler, a librarian at the Smithsonian Institution and a leading figure in several American Jewish institutions, including AJHS. The New York Times article mentioned some of the items that AJHS intended to display, singling out "Columbus's earliest records of [the] discovery [of America] written to Jews in Spain" and "[George] Washington's letters to Jews." The extensive, wide-ranging scope envisioned for this exhibition was evinced by plans to show "a collection of all books written by the Jews of America or pertaining to American Judaism." Also, alongside objects relating the long history of Jews' presence in America, "it has been determined to give Jews from Germany and Russia"—that is, immigrants who would have arrived in the United States within the preceding half-century or so (and, in the case of Jews from the Russian Empire, were then coming to America at an unprecedented rate)—their "proper space." In addition to objects pertaining specifically to Jewish life in America, the display would also include "an international exhibit of things pertaining to ecclesiastical art and to Jewish antiquities."2 The proposed exhibition would be the first of its kind in the United States. Indeed, until that date, public exhibitions of Jewish material culture anywhere had been very limited. Two major exhibitions had been presented in Europe during the previous century: a display of the [End Page 367] Judaica collection of composer Isaac Strauss at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris and the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, which had been mounted in London's Royal Albert Hall for three months in 1887. Jewish ceremonial objects had also been included in larger displays on world religions at American world's fairs in several cities in the 1880s and 1890s. None of these exhibitions addressed the history of Jews in America. By the end of 1901, however, less than half a year after the announcement in the New York Times, AJHS leaders decided to postpone the exhibition for a year and to "extend the work of the society on…the question of the advisability of holding an American Jewish Historical Exhibition."3 By the end of 1902, AJHS decided to table plans for the exhibition indefinitely, and the organization never pursued the exhibition further. Despite it being an unrealized project, the proposed American Jewish Historical Exhibition offers insights into the developing notion of placing Jewish items on public view as a new Jewish cultural practice. The planned exhibition marked a threshold in identifying what might constitute American Jewish material culture and conceptualizing its significance both for Jews in the United States and for their Christian neighbors. Shortly after the first temporary displays of Jewish ceremonial objects, manuscripts, and other items had taken place in Europe and the United States during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, efforts to create institutionalized collections of these materials were inaugurated on both sides of the Atlantic. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the opening of the first Jewish museum in Europe (in Vienna, in 1895) and the beginnings of the oldest Jewish museum in the United States (what eventually became the Jewish Museum of New York, in 1904). The exhibition envisioned by AJHS drew on some of these initiatives for inspiration, while addressing a particular focus on American Jewry. The records of this proposed project include discussions of what items to put on display and how to arrange them, as well as practical concerns regarding the exhibition's venue, promotion, and costs. Moreover, these discussions redounded to larger issues: the mission of AJHS as a learned society; how...