Yiddish theatre, Franz Kafka and art movements of the 20th century
by Charlotte Hafner, ARSP Volunteer Yiddish theatre groups have been touring through Eastern Europe between about 1890 and 1933. However, the heightened discrimination and antisemitism in Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century, often accompanied by violent pogroms against Jewish people, made life quite difficult for many of […]
The London Yiddish Choir is at the Museum – come join us!
by Robin Rubenstein, Guest Blogger This story begins like a Jewish joke: an Irish Jew, a Russian Jew and an American Jew meet in a hall in West London… In June 2009, I attended Shivaun Woolfson’s extraordinary exhibition “Surviving History: Portraits from Vilna” at Spiro Ark. The multi-media presentation included film, artefacts, and moving testimony […]
Yiddish Classes at the Museum
by Peter Walton, Guest Blogger Greetings! This is a new blog about an informal Yiddish class that is now meeting in the Jewish Museum London every Tuesday at 7-8.30pm. I call it a class but its not like a conventional language class that follows a syllabus and where the students are graded (beginners, lower intermediate […]
Animating the Museum
by Alice Quine, Assistant Curator Last month the Jewish Museum and Chocolate Films hosted a week-long animation workshop focusing on objects in our collection. During the week 17 young people, aged 12 to 21, got to look behind the scenes, exploring the museum stores and thinking about how museums collect objects. They then researched ten […]
Mark Titchner art installation
Yesterday saw the installation of a new work by Turner Prize nominated artist Mark Titchner at the museum, as part of Outsidereal, an art trail organised by Camden Council which will be running until 31 October. The text pieces created for us are based on the phrase ‘Not For Self But For All’, which is a translation of […]
Obscuratorial Finds – Why do we have so many…?
by Alice Quine, Curatorial Assistant From the late 19th century a large influx of Jewish immigrants settled in the East End of London, bringing with them a wide variety of customs and activities. This included the very popular establishment of Yiddish theatre, whose use of the home dialect and relatable themes such as assimilation and poverty […]
