BACK IN BUSINESS
Following a tumultuous period in its illustrious history, the Judah L. Magnes Museum — which boasts of the third-largest Judaica collection in the United States — is celebrating its 40th anniversary and marking its reopening as an independent entity with “Brought to Light — The Storied Collections of the Judah L. Magnes Museum.”
This is the first exhibit at the Berkeley museum since the planned merger of the Magnes with the Jewish Museum of San Francisco fell apart.
“We are really known all over the world as a place that collects objects from the Jewish community and represents Jewish life throughout history,” said the museum’s acting executive director, Joanne Backman. “We see this de-merging and reopening as a way of getting our name back again.”
The exhibit reintroduces more than 100 drawings and antique ceremonial items amassed by the museum’s founder and director emeritus, Seymour Fromer. Among the items on display are a Torah ark from the Queen Mary, the Cunard ship that Jews used to escape the Nazis; a brass, 15th-century yad, or Torah pointer, from Italy and a 14th-century Chanukah lamp from Spain.
“Visitors to the exhibit can expect to be blown away by the stories that a lot of these pieces tell,” Backman said. “There are stories of sorrow and stories of joy and stories of deplorable treatment of Jewish people, and there are stories of triumph and redemption.”
Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., Berkeley; through April 25, 2004. Sun.-Thu. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; donations suggested. (510-549-6950 or www.magnes.org)
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
