Jodenbuurt in Amsterdam

1 October 2024 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  6 minutes

© flickr.com - Paul Arps/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – Paul Arps/cc-by-2.0

The Jodenbuurt (Dutch: Jewish neighbourhood) is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. For centuries before World War II, it was the center of the Dutch Jews of Amsterdam — hence, its name (literally: Jewish quarter). It is best known as the birthplace of Baruch Spinoza, the home of Rembrandt, and the Jewish ghetto of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.   read more…

Ohel Jakob synagogue in Munich

25 June 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Jewish Center Munich: Ohel Jakob Synagogue, Jewish Musuem and Jewish Community Center (from left to right) © Schlaier

Jewish Center Munich: Ohel Jakob Synagogue, Jewish Musuem and Jewish Community Center (from left to right)
© Schlaier

Ohel Jakob (from Hebrew: “Jacob’s Tent”) is a synagogue in Munich in Germany. It was built between 2004 and 2006 as the new main synagogue for the Jewish community in Munich and is located at the Sankt-Jakobs-Platz. The synagogue was inaugurated on 9 November 2006 on the 68th anniversary of the Kristallnacht. The building is part of the new Jewish Center consisting of the synagogue, the Jewish Museum Munich and a community center.   read more…

Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris

15 May 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Paris / Île-de-France Reading Time:  13 minutes

The Emancipation room housing the Dreyfus Archives Fund © Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Emancipation room housing the Dreyfus Archives Fund © Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Museum of Jewish Art and History (French: Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme or mahJ) is the largest French museum of Jewish art and history. It is located in the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais district in Paris. The museum conveys the rich history and culture of Jews in Europe and North Africa from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Its fine collection of religious objects, archives, manuscripts, and works of art promotes the contributions of Jews to France and to the world, especially in the arts. The museum’s impressive collections include works of art from Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani. The museum has a bookshop selling books on Jewish art and history and Judaica, a media library with an online catalogue accessible to the public, and an auditorium which offers conferences, lectures, concerts, performances, and seminars. It also provides guided weekly visits in English during the tourist season (April to July) for individuals as well as students and teachers, and workshops for children, families, and adults.   read more…

Jewish Museum Frankfurt and Museum Judengasse

20 March 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  4 minutes

Frankfurter Judengasse in 1868

Frankfurter Judengasse in 1868

The Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main is the oldest independent Jewish Museum in Germany. It was opened by Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl on 9 November 1988, the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht.   read more…

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin

27 January 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Berlin, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  15 minutes

© Orator/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Orator/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000-square-metre (200,000 sq ft) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae“, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae are 2.38 metres (7 ft 10 in) long, 0.95 metres (3 ft 1 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 metres (7.9 in to 15 ft 5.0 in). They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew. An attached underground “Place of Information” (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem. Building began on April 1, 2003, and was finished on December 15, 2004. It was inaugurated on May 10, 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Mitte neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately 25 million.   read more…

Theme Week West Jerusalem – Israel Museum

17 October 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  17 minutes

Hadrian bronze bust from Tel Shalem © Oren Rozen/cc-by-sa-4.0

Hadrian bronze bust from Tel Shalem © Oren Rozen/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Israel Museum was established in 1965 as Israel‘s national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of West Jerusalem, ajacent to the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among the unique objects on display are the Venus of Berekhat Ram; the interior of a 1736 Zedek ve Shalom synagogue from Suriname; necklaces worn by Jewish brides in Yemen; a mosaic Islamic prayer niche from 17th-century Persia; and a nail attesting to the practice of crucifixion in Jesus’ time. An urn-shaped building on the grounds of the museum, the Shrine of the Book, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and artifacts discovered at Masada. It is one of the largest museums in the region.   read more…

Theme Week West Jerusalem – Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority

19 September 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  13 minutes

Aerial view of Yad Vashem © Godot13/cc-by-sa-3.0

Aerial view of Yad Vashem © Godot13/cc-by-sa-3.0

Yad Vashem is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Established in 1953, Yad Vashem is located on the western slope of Mount Herzl on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem, 804 meters (2,638 ft) above sea level and adjacent to the Jerusalem Forest. The memorial consists of a 180-dunam (18.0 ha; 44.5-acre) complex containing the Holocaust History Museum, memorial sites such as the Children’s Memorial and the Hall of Remembrance, The Museum of Holocaust Art, sculptures, outdoor commemorative sites such as the Valley of the Communities, a synagogue, a research institute with archives, a library, a publishing house, and an educational center named The International School/Institute for Holocaust Studies.   read more…

Theme Week Warsaw – Museum of the History of Polish Jews

1 January 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, House of the Month, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  10 minutes

© Wojciech Kryński/cc-by-sa-3.0-pl

© Wojciech Kryński/cc-by-sa-3.0-pl

POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polish: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich) is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum’s name means, in English, either “Poland” or “rest here” and is related to a legend on the arrival of the first Jews in Poland. The cornerstone was laid in 2007, and the museum was first opened on April 19, 2013. The museum’s Core Exhibition opened in October 2014. The museum features a multimedia narrative exhibition about the vibrant Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years up to the Holocaust. By the middle of the 1930s, Poland had the largest Jewish minority in Europe, with a share of about 10% of the total population. The building, a postmodern structure in glass, copper, and concrete, was designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma.   read more…

Jewish Museum in Berlin

8 November 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Berlin, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  14 minutes

Kollegienhaus, the baroque part of the Jewish Museum © flickr.com - Jess & Peter/cc-by-2.0

Kollegienhaus, the baroque part of the Jewish Museum © flickr.com – Jess & Peter/cc-by-2.0

The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin) is one of the largest Jewish Museums in Europe. In two buildings, one of which is a new addition specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind, two millennia of German Jewish history are on display in the permanent exhibition as well as in various changing exhibitions. German-Jewish history is documented in the collections, the library and the archive, in the computer terminals at the museum’s Rafael Roth Learning Center, and is reflected in the museum’s program of events. The museum opened to the public in 2001.   read more…

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