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Abstract
This article explores the role of communal museums as constructors of identity and as political agents in Israeli society. Their avowed target is to act as realms of memory and through that function they provide focal points for the construction of ethnic entities. As the Israeli heritage centres declare communities according to non-Jewish political borders they provide the basis for new identities. As educational centres outside the hegemonic culture they vie for a re-formulation of that culture. For that they glorify the community’s past based on its history in the Diaspora, but also very much on Zionist accomplishments.
Notes
1. Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation,” in Representing the Nation: A Reader. Histories, Heritage, and Museums, ed. David Boswell and Jessica Evans (New York: Routledge, 1999), 38.
2. Shlomo Ben-Ami, “Israeli Identity as an Identity of an Immigrant Society,” in Religion and Nationalism in Israel and in the Middle East, ed. Neri Horowitz [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2002), 227.
3. Barbara Black, On Exhibit: The Victorians and their Museums (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000).
4. Cited in Ghislaine Lawrence, “Object Lessons in the Museum Medium,” in Objects of Knowledge, ed. Susan Pierce (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 103.
5. Elaine Heuman Gurian, “What is the Object of this Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums,” in Reinventing the Museum. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2004), 282.
6. The websites announce the forthcoming museum and include statements of intentions. As such they are pertinent to the subject of this study.
7. Of course, this wasn’t an Israeli peculiarity. The United States held similar ideas about the ‘absorption’ of immigrants. Charles Hirshman, Philip Kasinitz and Josh DeWind, “Introduction to Part II: Immigrant Adaptation, Assimilation, and Incorporation,” in The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, ed. Charles Hirshman, Philip Kasinitz and Josh DeWind (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), 127.
8. Michael R. Weisser, A Brotherhood of Memory. Jewish Landsmanschaft in the New World (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 279–83. Similarly see S.N. Eisebstadt, “The Oriental Jews in Israel A Report on a Preliminary Study in Culture-Contacts,” Jewish Social Studies 12 (1950): 199–222.
9. One of the prominent protagonists of this analysis is Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, “The Struggle over the Symbols of Collective Identity on its Limits in the Post-Revolutionary Israeli Society,” in Zionism: Contemporary Debate, Attitudes and Ideologies, ed. Pinhas Ginosar and Avi Bareli [in Hebrew] (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 1996), 2–19, 28. Interestingly, this process is almost simultaneous with the emergence of African American museums in the US, Edmund Barry Gaither, “‘Hey! That’s Mine’: Thoughts on Pluralism and American Museums,” Reinventing the Museum (see note 5), 113.
10. Ruth Kark and Noam Perry, “Museums and Multi-Culturalism in Israel” [in Hebrew], Horizons in Geography 70 (2008): 111, http://geography.huji.ac.il/.upload/RuthPub/Num%20135%20Museams%20and%20Multicaulturalism%20in%20Israel.pdf (accessed August 7, 2011).
11. Hanna Yablonka, “The Law for Punishment of the Nazis and their Collaborators: Legislation, Implementation and Attitudes” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 82 (December 1996): 136, and also Yechiam Weitz, “The Law for Punishment of the Nazis and their Collaborators as Image and Reflection of Public Opinion” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 82 (December 1996): 153–64. See also Mooli Brog, “A Memorial for the Fighters and Commemoration of the Victims: Efforts by the Va’ad Haleumi to Establish Yad Vashem 1846–1949” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 119 (March 2006): 87–120.
12. Amnon Raz-Krakozkin, “Exile Within Sovereignty: Toward a Critique of the ‘Negation of Exile’ within Israeli Culture” [in Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 4 (Autumn 1993): 24.
13. But, it keeps to a custom that is neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi, called the ‘Roman Custom’.
14. A comparison between two other centres exists – which takes for granted the ethnic protest. Shelly Shenhav-Keller, “Ethnicity, Identity and Collective Memory in Two Ethnic Heritage Centers in Israel, AIS 2010 – Toronto,” 9, http://www.aisisraelstudies.org/papers/AIS2010_Shenhav_Keller.pdf (accessed August 10, 2011). Likewise, Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “Zionist Identity and Jewish-Arab Identity in the Collective Memory of Iraqi Immigrants in Israel,” Alpaim 27 (2004): 173–252, focuses on the Babylonian centre which also emphasizes the duality of the professed Zionism of the centre and its protest against ethnic marginalization. However, this research disregards the European centres and the similarities with these centres. For a comparison between the history of modernisation of German, Hungarian and Iraqi Jews and the implication of the processing of their memories into historical writing in Israel: Guy Miron, “Between Berlin and Baghdad – Iraqi Jewish History and the Challenge of Integrated Jewish Historiography” [in Hebrew], Zion 71 (2006): 73–98.
15. See the websites of the Romanian, Al-Ghariba and Tunisian communities: The Romanian Jewish Community Museum – About the Museum, http://www.amirorg.com/apage/16258.php (accessed April 3, 2012); El Ghriba Jerusalem – Cultural Centre for the Heritage of Tunisian Jews in Jerusalem [in Hebrew], http://elghribajerusalem.com/about (accessed April 3, 2012); and Tunisian Jews, http://www.amit4u.net/home/doc.aspx?mCatID=9757 (accessed April 3, 2012).
16. Ariella Azoulay, “With Open Doors: Museums of History and the Israeli Public Space” [in Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 4 (Autumn 1993): 87–8.
17. The Heritage Centre for the Turkish Community in Israel, Eyal Peretz, “Letter from the Chairman,” http://www.arkadash.org/site/index.asp?depart_id=99510&lat=en (accessed August 15, 2012).
18. “Background” [in Hebrew], http://www.arkadash.org/99510/המרכז-למורשת-יהדות-טורקיה (accessed March 24, 2011).
19. Yemenite MPs for the Preservation of Yemenite Heritage [in Hebrew], http://rotter.net/cgi-bin/forum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&forum=gil&om=5316&omm=35&viewmode; Ranit Nahum Halevi, “A New Group in the Knesset: Yemenite MKs Come Together to Preserve Yemenite Heritage” [in Hebrew], NEWS 1, March 4, 2004, http://www.news1.co.il/archive/001-D-41664-00.html?tag=8-15-07 (accessed March 27, 2011).
20. Ya’akov Manzur, “Welcome at the Beit Hahayal 10 Sept. 1987” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 6 (Passover 1998): 25; Ruth ‘Atar, “Report on Events in the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center during 1988–1989” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 7 (1990): 41.
21. “To Arrest the Fleeting Moment” [in Hebrew only] (1991) is among the movies that are viewed in the museum and can also be purchased, http://www.omuseums.org.il/museum/sitePage.aspx?pageID=339&Place=1 (accessed August 15, 2012).
22. Eyal Peretz founder of the association Arkadash and the heritage centre, in a video “Arkadash, the Turkish Community in Israel” [in Hebrew], http://www.arkadash.org/ (accessed September 1, 2011).
23. Daniel J. Sherman, “Objects of Memory: History and Narrative in French War Museums,” French Historical Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 49–50 is based on Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoir,” Representations 2, no. 6 (Spring 1989): 12: ‘it is the nostalgic dimension of these devotional institutions that makes them seem beleaguered and cold – they mark the rituals of a society without ritual’.
24. Teddy Kollek, “Museums and National Spirit” [in Hebrew], Studio 15 (1990): 42.
25. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 12.
26. Johannes von Moltke, “Identities on Display: Jewishness and the Representational Politics of the Museum,” in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies, ed. Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 81.
27. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 16.
28. Andreas Huyssen, “Monument and Memory in a Postmodern Age,” in Holocaust Memorials. The Art of Memory in History, ed. James E. Young (Munich and New York: Prestel, 1994), 10.
29. Ruth ‘Atar, “A Dream and its Realization. The History of the Heritage of Babylonian Jewry 1971–1988” [in Hebrew], an unpublished essay, the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Centre, 23. See also Yehuda Avishur, “The First Convention for the Documentation of Babylonian Jewry’s Heritage” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 8 (December 1990): 2. For the new Diorama: Zvi Yehuda, “The Store of the Spices Seller – the ‘Atar’ – Design and Research” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 11 (February–March 1993): 13.
30. Interview with the founder and curator of the Bat-Yam Libyan Centre, Pedahzur Ben’atiya, July 25, 2011, and in e-mail to the author, August 1, 2011. On December 27, 2005 the Or-Shalom centre initiated a series of community meetings. The gathering of the Khoms community was filmed and documented. “News of the Website” [in Hebrew]; Or-Shalom Centre, http://www.or-shalom.org.il/news.asp?PageId=2&article_main_id (accessed July 23, 2012).
31. http://www.eelebetamar.co.il/hebrew//Default.aspx (accessed March 27, 2011).
32. On the website, along with a call to help the museum in its efforts in gathering information and artefacts one can also find an invitation to register and to receive information about the museum’s activities, “Appeal to Visitors and Websurfer,” http://www.hjm.org.il/?leftframe=menueng.html&mainframe=/main.aspx/En (accessed March 3, 2014).
33. The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, “Website Archive for Information leaflets – Echoes from the Herzl Day 2007,” http://www.hjm.org.il/ (accessed August 8, 2012).
34. Stef Wertheimer, “Foreword” [in Hebrew], The Museum of the German Speaking Jews – The Yeke Heritage Centre, ed. and curator Ruti Ofek (Tefen: Open Museum and Association of Israelis of Central European Origin, 2011), 8.
35. Ludmila Jordanova, “Objects of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Museums,” in The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo (1989) (Trowbridge: Redwoodbooks, 2000), 22–41, see esp. 34–6.
36. There are very few articles online by Or-Shalom Centre on the immigration experience: http://www.or-shalom.org.il/article_2.asp?article_main_id=1&article_topic_id=68&article_topic_name=עליהוקליטה; Research is picking up the subject, but not much has been published yet; see for instance Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “Iraqi Immigrants and the Israeli Establishment – the Struggle for Integration” [in Hebrew], Age of Zionism, ed. Anita Shapira, Jehuda Reinharz and Jacob Harris (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Centre, 2000), 271–95. another example can be found in a book about Yemenite immigrants, where only four of the 18 articles (those by Yael Katzir, Yosef Halevi, Dina Greitzer and Rachel Sharabi) bring out the immigrant’s experience: Bat Zion and Araki Klurman, eds., Yemenite Immigrants in the Land of Israel: Yemenite Jews – History, Society, Culture (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2006).
37. Of the kind conducted by CIJOH (Centre for Iranian Jewish Oral History) in the USA: http://www.homasarshar.com/cijoh/oralhistory/index.htm (accessed March 25, 2011).
38. For instance on August 15, 2012 the yearly memorial conference for the founder of the Association for the Cultivation of Society and Culture (of Yemenite Jewry) in memory of Ovadya Shalom held a study day on the religious literature and on Yemenite immigrants in Israel: http://www.teman.org.il/ni-0053.php (accessed July 23, 2012).
39. “In memory of Reuven Sa’id a razor for shaving,” Neharde’a 30: 10. Similarly in the Hungarian centre some of the artefacts were dedicated to the memory of family members murdered during the Holocaust; an example is the book of birth registrations from Beled donated by Dr Willy Hoffman-Hirsch: http://www.hjm.org.il/pritim/default.aspx [page in Hebrew] (accessed July 23, 201)2.
40. Orly Bahar, “Donations to the Museum during 2007–2008,” Neharde’a 30 (June 2009): 10–14.
41. One of the most recent and most impressive acquisitions for the Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, information sheet no. 39, April 2012, announces the discovery of the diary of Szálasi Ferenc, leader of the Arrow Cross Party and prime minister of Hungary October 15, 1944–April 1945.
42. “Cochin Jewish Heritage Center,” http://kochinculture.beer-sheva.gonegev.co.il/english.asp (accessed August 6, 2012).
43. Even the Museum for Italian Jewish Art that is dedicated to arks and religious objects from the Renaissance and Baroque periods distributes to visitors at no extra charge the book Elia Samuel Hartom, The Life of the People of Israel (1954) [in Hebrew], a new extended edition edited by his son Rabbi Menachem Emanuel Hartom (Jerusalem: Kedem, 1989), which presents the particularities of their religious customs.
44. The room that deals with the Zionist and Israeli chapters in the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Centre is temporarily closed due to reorganization upon the addition of a new room.
45. For one example out of many: on the contribution of the Babylonian Heritage Centre for the foundation of the international association of Iraqi Jews see Zvi Gabai, “The Foundation of the International Organization of Iraqi Jews” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 29 (October–November 1987), http://www.babylonjewry.org.il/new/hebrew/nehardea/29/7.htm (accessed September 4, 2011). Avi Pedahzur from the Libyan Museum also talked about the connection to the Rome community: interview, June 21, 2011, Or Yehuda.
46. The only heritage centre that refers to expatriates outside Israel is the German Speaking Heritage Centre, but even there it does not refer to communities outside Israel and not after the foundation of the state. The Babylonian Centre is supposed to include expatriates outside Israel after the current refurbishment is completed. Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “Facing the Past” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 29 (1987), http://www.babylonjewry.org.il/new/hebrew/nehardea/29/25.htm (accessed August 18, 2011).
47. In common Zionist phraseology, the period when the Jewish people were scattered in diasporas was the period of exile (Galut) from the homeland, when the history of the people came to halt. Only during the 1970s and 1980s did the Zionist negation of Diaspora weaken, and Western Liberal diasporas came to be accepted as part of normal modern Jewish existence. Danny Gutwein, “Criticism of ‘Diaspora Negation’ and the Privatization of Private Consciousness in Israel,” posted March 19, 2011, http://danigutwein.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/44/#_ftn1 (accessed May 26, 2013).
48. Raz-Krakozkin, “Exile within Sovereignty,” 23–55. Yet, contrary to Raz-Krakozkin’s thesis, theological affirmation of the Diaspora never entirely rid itself of the negative challenge that initiated it: Joel E. Rembaum, “The Development of a Jewish Exegetical Tradition regarding Isaiah 53,” The Harvard Theological Review 75, no. 3 (July 1982): 292. An example of the importance of the Christian challenge in the disputation of Majorka: Ora Limor, “Polemical Varieties: Religious Disputations in 13th Century Spain,” Iberia Judaica II (2010): 73, 74. One of the modern reactions to this challenge is: Eliezer Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Shalem, 2006), 107.
49. Amnon Raz-Krakozkin, “Exile Within Sovereignty: Toward a Critique of the ‘Negation of Exile’ within Israeli Culture – Second Part” [in Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 5 (Autumn 1994): 113–32. See also, following Raz-Krakozkin, Sara Chinski, “‘Eyes Wide Shut’: The Symptomatic Acquired Albinism in the Field of Israeli Art” [in Hebrew], Theory and Criticism 20 (Spring 2002): 61, 77. Raz-Krakozkin expects a healing of the relationship with the Palestinians would follow a more positive and affirmative attitude towards the Exile. Admittedly, the centres follow Zionist practice by omitting any mention of the Palestinian problem – except for the German Speaking Museum which mentions the Brit-Shalom two-nation state idea.
50. A.D. Smith, “Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism,” Israel Affairs 2, no. 2 (1995): 5. See also Yaron Zur, “Diaspora Nationalism and Serious Crisis in the Diasporas,” in Vision and Revision. A Hundred Years of Zionist Historiography, ed. Yehi’am Weitz (Jerusalem: Shazar Centre, 1997), 171–92.
51. See short video on website. The video represents faithfully the version that guides tell visitors in the museum: http://www.livluv.org.il/?CategoryID=123 (accessed July 30, 2012).
52. The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, “About the Exhibition – the Ties with the Land of Israel” [the Hebrew site], http://www.hjm.org.il/ (accessed July 31, 2012).
53. The Association of Israelis of Central European Origin is the co-founder of the German Speaking Jewish Heritage Centre. On the website the goals of the centre are presented: http://www.irgun-jeckes.org/?CategoryID=201&ArticleID=85 (accessed August 6, 2012).
54. The museum is part of the Dona Gracia Hotel in Tiberius: “The Dona Gracia Medal” [in Hebrew], http://www.donagracia.com/pages/he/mdlyit-donh-grtzih.php (accessed August 6, 2012). In the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Centre the section dealing with the Israeli chapter of the community’s history is currently being refurbished.
55. Charles Saumarez Smith, “Museums, Artefacts, and Meanings,” in The New Museology (see note 35), 6; Jordanova, “Objects of Knowledge,” 92.
56. Anthony Alan Shelton, “In the Lair of the Monkey: Notes towards a Post-Modernist Museography,” in Objects of Knowledge (see note 4), 97–8, although he speaks of works of art, the same is true of ethnographic museums, even if to a lesser extent. See also in African American museums, Gaither, “‘Hey! That’s Mine,’” 114–15; Gurian, “What is the Object of this Exercise?,” 273.
57. Bourdieu is discussing art, but it works for all museum objects. Shelton, “In the Lair of the Monkey,” 83.
58. Azoulay, “With Open Doors,” 84.
59. Fredric Jameson, “Foreword” to Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), xii.
60. On the differences within the Hungarian community between the different areas see Sari Reuven, “The Centre of Jews in Slovakia and the Jewish Council in Hungary: Similarities and Differences” [in Hebrew], The Path of Memory 36 (2000): 49–54; Kinga Fromovitz, “The Religious Movements in Hungarian Jewry (Orthodoxy, Neology, and Status Quo-Ante) 1868/9–1950: Socio-economic Demographic and Organizational Characteristics” [in Hebrew], PhD Thesis, Bar-Ilan University 2002.
61. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Zionist Identity,” 188–96. Yosef Meir claimed that communists and other non-Zionists were left out for pragmatic reasons Yosef Meir, “Research on the Heritage Center of Babylonian Jewry” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 28 (2006): 10–12.
62. The U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art is presented on several websites with those very words. Among others see Michael-Israel, a multi-language database for Cultural heritage in Europe, U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art [the Hebrew site]. The English site does not have the same invitation: http://www.michael-culture.org.il/pub-mpf/document.html?totaldocs=7&base=dcollection&id=IL-DC-eab759a4&querybase=dcollection&pagename=results.html&from1=browsing_place.xml&val1=browsing.fspacecov.italy&qid=miKl-q&hppage=20&curlang=he (accessed March 24, 2011); likewise, a brochure that reports the activity of the Allepo Jews Centre, “Events to Disseminate the Heritage of Allepo Jews 1985–2005,” http://www.aleppojews.com/binhanhalat/index.html (accessed March 24, 2011). The Centre for the Research of Yemenite Jewry in the name of Ovadiah Shalom also calls for raising the prestige of ‘Yemenite culture and heritage’, “The Research of Yemenite Jewry, Events – Conferences and Congresses,” http://www.teman.org.il/seminars.php (accessed August 28, 2011).
63. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Zionist Identity,” 194; on the socio-economic detrimental effect see Shlomo Svirski, Orientals and Ashkenazim in Israel. The Ethnic Division of Labour [in Hebrew] (Haifa: Mahbarot Lemehkqr uleviqoret, 1981), 50–56, and Deborah Bernstein, “Temporary Encampments in the 1950s” [in Hebrew], Magazine for Research and Criticism 5 (1980): 19–21.
64. The museum is undergoing refurbishment and many of the pictures are stored away – including those about the tent-townships, but the museum preserves its original set-up in several picture albums which have been kindly shown to me by the museum’s curator, Ms ‘Idit Sharoni. However, the DDT container and its inscription are currently presented. Due to the addition of a new wing the whole Israeli chapter is being removed and remodelled.
65. The United Organization of Jews from Romania, Richard Armon, “The Rationale for Establishing the Museum of Romanian Aliya,” http://www.amirorg.com/len/apage/62018.php (accessed August 6, 2012). Transylvania is indeed included within Romania, yet the dominant language is Hungarian and the sovereignty of the region is contested by the Hungarian government. On the construction of Romanian nationalism see Wim van Meurs, “Carving a Moldavian Identity out of History,” Nationalities Papers 26, no. 1 (March 1998): 39–56. On the first stirrings of Romanian nationalism in the late eighteenth century see Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians a History, trans. Alexandra Bley-Vroman (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1989), 118–21.
66. The website of Arkadash, the Turkish Jewry’s Centre, provides a history of Turkish Jewry which precedes the Ottoman empire, then identifies with it, then succeeds it, http://www.arkadash.org/99510/%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99 (accessed August 6, 2012). The German Speaking Heritage Centre – according to the website of the Association of Israelis of Central European Origin – ‘unites expatriates from Germany, Austria and other regions of Central Europe influenced by German culture’. In fact, in the museum and in the catalogue that was published people are included who were born in Hungary, in Romania and in Poland: http://www.irgun-jeckes.org/?CategoryID=201&ArticleID=85 (accessed August 6, 2012), and see Ofek, The Museum of the German Speaking Jews (see note 34), 69–71, 76–9, 83–4. The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry represents expatriates from: Transylvania, Slovakia, Carpatho-Russia (Russia), Bachka (Croatia), Banat (Hungary, Serbia, Romania) and Burgenland (Austria), “About the Museum,” http://www.hjm.org.il/ (accessed August 6, 2012).
67. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 8–9.
68. Eyal Ben-Ari and Yoram Bilu, “Saints’ Sanctuaries in Israeli Development Town: On Mechanism of Urban Transformation,” Urban Anthropology 16, no. 2 (1987): 243–72; The term ‘hybrid space’ is used by Haim Yacobi, “From State Imposed Urban Planning to Israeli Diasporic Place. The Case of Netivot and the Grave of Baba Sali,” Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place, ed. Julia Brauch, Anna Lipphardt and Alexandra Nocke, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 77; Erez Zfadia and Haim Yacobi, “Periphery, Architecture and Diasporic Sense of Place,” in Rethinking Israeli Space: Periphery and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2011), 30.
69. Shelton, “In the Lair of the Monkey,” 92–3.
70. Jean-François Lyotard, “What is Postmodernism?,” in The Postmodern Condition, 79.
71. Haya and David Goren (Dangur) writing to Pnina Shaham, December 8, 2010 [in Hebrew], Nehrde’a 31 (Autumn 2010): 69.
72. Elizabeth Crooke, Museums and Community: Ideas, Issues and Challenges (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007), 11–15, 30–45.
73. Local museums help to consolidate a community, ibid., 3–4, 17–18.
74. The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, “Website archive for information leaflets – Echoes from the Herzl Day 2007,” http://www.hjm.org.il/ (accessed August 8, 2012).
75. The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, Information Leaflet, 34 (September 2008); Haya and David Goren (Dangur) writing to Pnina, December 8, 2010.
76. Libyan Jews Museum Or-Yehuda, Guestbook, June 14, 2011, although it is worth noting that the visitor did not take on the encompassing Libyan identity the museum is propagating and retained the original more particular identity.
77. Italian Jewish Art Museum, Handout leaflet.
78. Eavry sees these parties as the continuation of community life as it has been lived as opposed to the exhibition which he reads as ‘anachronistic and frozen episodes’ giving the parties an aura of authenticity – thus overlooking the ‘unauthentic’ environment, Yuval Eavry, “Hafla fi El Museum” [in Hebrew], Block 6 (2008): 77.
79. Gaither, “‘Hey! That’s Mine,’” 117.
80. Chinski, “‘Eyes Wide Shut,’” 58, 71.
81. Mordechai Ben-Porat, “The Babylonian Heritage Center” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 1 (Autumn 1979): 5; the centres boast of seminars for national and district inspectors from all educational movements, for teachers, and cultural events’ organisers from schools, and for groups from the IDF, see ‘Atar, “Report,” 40, 41. A list of subjects and plans for guided activity in the Museum of Libyan Jews. In the Information Leaflets of the Or-Yehuda Municipality 1998 [in Hebrew], 7, http://storage.cet.ac.il/CetForums/Storage/MessageFiles/242/11313/Forum11313M1I0.doc (accessed August 18, 2011), The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry carries eight different plans: “Plans for Children and Youth” [in Hebrew], http://www.hjm.org.il/ (accessed August 19, 2012); The German Speaking Jews Museum also carries various activity plans for children and grownups “Guided Activity Plans” [in Hebrew], http://www.iparks.co.il/museum/sitePage.aspx?pageID=344&Place=1 (accessed September 1, 2011).
82. Avi Pedazur, Libyan Museum’s curator, guide to a tour, June 21, 2011.
83. Cited in ‘Atar, “A Dream,” 2.
84. Lisa Rabinovitz on the Guest Book of the Babylonian Jewry Centre, http://www.babylonjewry.org.il/new/hebrew/index.html (accessed August 8, 2012).
85. Crooke, Museums and Community, 39, following Bourdieu, and the new theories about the new ‘active audience’ that made the move to conceptualise museum visitors as active in the construction of their own knowledge do not apply. We can see that all the heritage centres make use of the educational establishment, expecting schools to bring pupils to be educated in the museum, as a ‘captive audience’. About the new theories of learning and communication in museums, see Eileen Hooper-Greenhill, “Museum Learners as Active Postmodernists: Contextualizing Constructivism,” in Educational Role of the Museum, ed. Eileen Hooper-Greenhill (1994) (London: Routledge, 2001), 67–72.
86. Cited in Moltke, “Identities on Display,” 82.
87. Kark and Perry, “Museums and Multi-Culturalism,” 111.
88. Azoulay, “With Open Doors,” 87–8. Shenhav-Keller about the Libyan and Babylonian Museums in Or Yehuda, Shenhav-Keller, “Ethnicity, Identity and Collective Memory,” 9 .
89. The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, About the Museum [in Hebrew], http://www.hjm.org.il/ (accessed August 19, 2012). The German Speaking Jews’ Museum celebrates more the success of transplanting the German Jewish culture but it also tells of the struggle against the melting-pot: David Witzthum, “Life Stories,” The Museum of the German Speaking Jews (see note 34), 33. The Italian Jewish Museum is the only one that doesn’t mention the melting-pot policy.
90. Meir-Glitzenstein, “Zionist Identity,” 183–4.
91. George F. MacDonald, the director of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Quebec from 1983 to 1998, saw the role of communal museums in a multi-cultural society as helping disseminate inter-cultural understanding and respect, George F. MacDonald, “Museums and the National Spirit” [in Hebrew], Studio 15 (1990): 48–9. See also: L. Forgan, “Heritage has the Power to Connect People and give them a Sense of Identity,” Museums Journal 108, no. 11 (November 2008): 19.
92. European ascendency is accepted without protest; see the editor of the Babylonian Jewry’s organ: Eliya Agassi, “Dear Readers,” Neharde’a 4 (Spring 1982): 3. He wishes to see concepts like ‘full equality in all spheres of life’, including the search for roots. Sociological research shows that people of Oriental/Muslim countries accept the unified national myth and do not undermine the Western self-perception of Israeli society, Efi Ya’ar, “Continuity and Change in Israeli Society: The Test of the Melting Pot” [in Hebrew], in Generations, Spaces, Identities: Contemporary View on the Israeli Society and Culture – to Shmuel Eisenstadt on his Eightieth Birthday, ed. H. Herzog, T. Kowhai and S. Zernike (Tel Aviv: Van Leer, 2007), 96, 98.
93. Placard at the entrance to the Babylonian Jews Heritage Museum.
94. Mordechai Ben-Porat, “Opening and Greetings at the Opening Show in Habima Hall Tel-Aviv 21 April 1987 and in Beit Hahayal in Tel Aviv 10 Sept. 1987” [in Hebrew], Neharde’a 6 (Passover 1988): 25.
95. Cited in the agreement of the associations, persons and institutions that act for the dissemination and preservation of Yemenite Jewry’s Heritage and the Rosh-Ha’yin Municipality on January 19, 1997; the agreement is in the Museum of Yemenite Jewry in Rosh-Ha’ayin. Similarly in an interview with Naftali Simhi, the present curator of the Yemnite Museum, with the author, June 27, 2011, Rosh Ha’ayin. Also Ben-Porat, “Opening and Greetings,” 25; Glitzenstein-Meir, “Iraqi Immigrants and the Israeli,” 295; elsewhere Meir-Glitzenstein, “Zionist Identity,” 187–8, sees the demand for equality and the acceptance of the Zionist ethos as contradictory, however, can also be an inclusionary reading of it.
96. P.W. Hartmann, “Judenporzellan,” Das grosse Kunstlexikon, BeyArs.Com, http://www.beyars.com/kunstlexikon/lexikon_4521.html (accessed April 24, 2012). For contrast to the simple style of the religious objects in the German Speaking Museum see Vivian B. Mann, “A Court Jew’s Silver Cup,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 43 (2008): 131–40. For Israel see the catalogue of a recent exhibition of Persian Jews: Lights and Shadows: The Story of Iran and the Jews, Exhibition, main curator Hagai Segev (Tel Aviv: Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People, 2010).
97. Zeller Ursula, Synagogen in Deutschland: eine virtuelle Rekonstruktion (Darmstadt: Technische Universität, 2004), see also: Technical University Darmstadt, “Synagogues in Germany – A Virtual Reconstruction,” http://www.cad.architektur.tu-darmstadt.de/synagogen/inter/en_menu.html (accessed April 24, 2012).
98. Witzthum, “Life Stories,” 32–3. The Orientalist theme is prevalent in the museum and its catalogue. On Orientalism among German Jews against East European Jews see Noah Isenberg, “To Pray Like a Dervis: Orientalist Discourse in Arnold Zweig’s ‘The Face of East European Jewry,’” in Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan Davidson and Derek J. Penslar (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 94–124; and Steven Ascheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1880–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1982).
99. Roni Lustig in an interview with the author, July 13, 2011, Safed; see also Nahum Halevi, “A New Group in the Knesset.”
100. Yael Padan, “RePlacing Memory,” in Constructing a Sense of Place: Architecture and Zionist Discourse, ed. Haim Yacobi (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 260. The Libyan museum in Or-Yehuda also provides a special space for the commemoration of the Holocaust.
101. The Yemenite Jews have a small museum in Benei Beraq that folds up and unfolds for groups of visitors, see http://www.nosachteiman.co.il/?CategoryID=876 (accessed August 19, 2012), and another small museum for German Jews ‘Institute of the Ashkenazi Heritage’, see Hayim Revir, “Wake-up Ashkenazis! How One Man Changed the Mistaken Image of the Small and Glorious Yekke Community in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew], Family, March 26, 2006, 44–6. Similarly, the North African community (Maghreb) have an Institute for the Research of the Communities and the Spiritual Heritage of the Jews of the Maghreb: Morocco, Tunis, Libya.
102. Different research shows different trends for the Ultra-Orthodox community; a general review of the differing opinions and trends is Eliezer Ben Rafael and Lior Ben-Chaim, Jewish Identities in a Multi-Modern Age [Hebrew] (Ra’anana: Open University Press, 2006), 205–12, 217–23, 245.
103. Eileen Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London: Routedge, 2000), 72.
104. Gurian, “What is the Object of this Exercise?,” 282.
105. Shelton, “In the Lair of the Monkey,” 85.