[Click here for Part 1.]
Survivor's Guilt
The second floor of the museum, “Choices and Challenges of Freedom, 1945-Today,” is where we boomers come in. My father had served in the military during World War II, but he never got over the survivor's guilt from knowing 6,000,000 European Jews died in concentration camps. He was a masterful cook of treyf like mussels marinara and paella, but illogical though this may sound, my pork-eating, atheist father was also a strong supporter of Israel.
I was impatient with all that. Growing up in mostly Catholic Staten Island, I just wanted to fit in, and this museum's exploration of the new suburbs – the Jewish Boy Scout troops, the “modern” kitchens (you can walk into a wonderful recreation of one in the NMAJH), the temptations of rock 'n' roll, etc. – evoke the period perfectly.
Jewish Rockers and Jonas Salk
As someone who came of age during the civil rights, anti-war, and women's liberation movements -- which appealed to the justice and freedom-seeking heritage in Jewish philosophy -- I love the photos of troublemakers Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Bella Abzug. Carol King gets some love here, too, but I didn't see any photos or hear any music by Bob Dylan or Paul Simon, Neil Diamond or even Jay & the Americans, with whom this former keyboard player once performed in the 1960s. Yeah, Jewish.
Dylan aka Zimmerman (left) and Simon do get a shout-out on the first floor's Only in America® Gallery/Hall of Fame, which uses multimedia and artifacts to evoke Jewish boldface names, from Emma Lazarus (“Give us your tired, your poor...”) to Barbra Streisand, from polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk to Chicago Bears superstar Sid Luckman (below, right: one very valuable football). As for Sandy Koufax, also honored here, even Staten Island's Orthodox rabbi paused during my cousin's Bar Mitzvah lesson to watch Koufax outpitch Whitey Ford in the '63 World Series.
Now, this was a rabbi who never would have stepped foot in my parents' Reformed temple. But lest we forget, Reformed Judaism had a method behind the madness of treyfa banquets, organ music, Chanukah bushes, and the rest: It aimed to make Judaism more competitive in the modern world so that people didn't drift away altogether -- so the core beliefs would survive the lures of Christmas and mayonnaise.
More Adaptations to America
The confirmation badge on the second floor of NMAJH reminds me of yet another way that Reformed Judaism sought to do this: Reformed congregations borrowed the American Christian idea of Sunday School, then devised conformation ceremonies to honor the graduates. Most Reformed temples continued to hold Bar Mitzvah ceremonies for 13-year-old boys, and, as shown in one of the exhibits, created Bat Mitzvahs for girls. Moreover, a few radical congregations substituted confirmation for Bar Mitzvahs altogether.
Heresy? Maybe, but whereas my friends from more “observant” congregations never set foot in a synagogue after their 13th birthday, the goal of confirmation (a term more observant Jews associate with Roman Catholicism) kept us engaged through senior year of high school. So it came to pass that during the last year of his confirmation studies, one of my Sunday School classmates resolved to become a rabbi. And he did.
Postscript: The National Museum of American Jewish History's day of rest is Monday, not Saturday.
[Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Tripatini's Jewish Heritage Travel group.]
On Twitter follow @EdWetschler
Images of scouting poster, Luckman's signed football, and confirmation badge courtesy of National Museum of American Jewish History.
Comments
In October I visited this museum with a Jewish friend and was impressed by how large and comprehensive its history of Jewish American life is. However, unlike Mr. Wetschler, my friend used the chronological exhibits to trace the changing role of women in Jewish and American life.