| Edification value |  |
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| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 95 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | John Rainolds, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, suggested the idea of an English Bible to King James. The King James Bible, published in 1611, is maybe the most important book in English.
Yeshiva’s Oxford show has one of only four surviving notebooks from the committee that fretted and deliberated over the translation, responsible for its majestic, enduring poetry. Who says nothing good ever comes from committees?
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The Center for Jewish History comprises five institutions under a single, Greek Revival, roof:
- American Jewish Historical Society
- American Sephardi Federation
- Leo Baeck Institute
- Yeshiva University Museum
- YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
It’s like a food hall for Jewish culture and history. Kosher food hall, anyway.
Accordingly, at any given time the exhibits going on there will be diverse. And there are a lot of them, spread across two floors of assorted spaces of differing sizes, shapes, and capacities, all arranged around a central atrium. During my visit I saw:
- A tremendous show of rare books on loan from Oxford’s Corpus Christi College.
- The work of George Salter, midcentury book designer extraordinaire
- Impressions of Jerusalem in pictures, video, sculpture, and words
- A brief overview of the German origins of Zionism in the early twentieth century.
- The story of a Portuguese diplomat who defied his superiors and eventually lost his job in his effort to give exit visas to as many people fleeing the Nazis as possible.
- A group show of art by current students at Abby Belkin Stern College.
Dusty Old Books
The rare book show, billed as “Five Hundred Years of Treasures from Oxford,” blew me away. According to the wall text, many of the books on view have never left Corpus Christi College before. I can’t imagine the relationship that led to this exhibit happening. The title misleads, though: although it’s Corpus Christi’s 500th anniversary, several of the works on display are way older than that. Indeed, at least two date to the tenth century. I mean seriously. Here there be books over a thousand years old.
Jewish-Adjacent Programming
I found it particularly interesting that although the show had a Hebrew section, it wasn’t really, well, super-Jewish. I mean, who would expect Corpus Christi to come to Yeshiva. However, in the college’s early days, its founder emphasized the “new learning” of reading holy books in their original languages –so Hebrew and Greek alongside the more usual Latin.
But it’s not purely Biblical, either. The show also features a copy of the Iliad, and numerous significant scientific works. In terms of Hebrew, it featured some beautiful examples of dual Hebrew/Latin manuscripts. It also had a book of Jewish daily prayers, written in Arabic but using the Hebrew alphabet, that somehow made its way to England before the 1200s.
On the science front, they had a copy of Vesalius’s Anatomy from 1555. It’s amazingly important, the first medical book based on contemporary dissections, not just received wisdom from the Classical world. And even better were the tons of annotations from some harried medical student. I love margin notes. Even if I can’t read them, I can empathize with this long-gone person striving to learn and absorb all this new, revolutionary knowledge. Try doing that on an eReader.
While a small show, it went incredibly deep. If it was at the Morgan, I reckon there would be a line to see it. It was hard to tear myself away to check out the rest of the Center for Jewish History exhibits. But tear I did, eventually.
More Books!
The George Salter show was fascinating, too. Once you see some examples of his work, you realize that he did tons of midcentury classics. And while you can’t judge a book by its cover, his distinctive way with typography and design must’ve helped sell at least some copies of the books he worked on.
The show speaks to Salter’s philosophy of design, from pure typographical covers to ones, like Atlas Shrugged, that capture some resonant idea of the book in simplified, graphical form.
Other Things at the Center for Jewish History
The Jerusalem show provided glimpses and views of the city by a whole variety of artists and writers. It included a tremendous, handmade model of old Jerusalem.
As with the Oxford show, I found it interesting (and welcome) that the perspectives on the city weren’t purely Jewish ones. Mark Twain gets a quote, as does grumpy Herman Melville, who had much to say on the quantity and quality of the stones of Judea. But my favorite quote came from a poem by Yehuda Amichai, “Jerusalem is a Port City,” where he builds an amazing metaphor. I’ll just quote the first and last lines here:
Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of the ages of ages./Jerusalem is the Venice of God.
The student art show was a student art show. A couple of clever things, a couple not-so-clever. And “Portugal the Last Hope: Sousa-Mendes’ Visas for Freedom” and “Zionismus: The German Roots of Zionism” shows both had interesting things to teach, though both went heavy on wall texts and quotes, lighter on art and artifacts.
The Bottom Line
With its diverse institutions all pursuing their different missions, the exhibits the Center for Jewish History cumulatively deliver a comprehensive and diverse look at Jewish concerns and interests. The Jewish Museum, by contrast, has a more narrowly artistic focus. Which absolutely isn’t a bad thing, and puts it on equal footing with many of the other specific-culture-focused institutions in the city. But I got more out of visiting the Center for Jewish History.
If the Yeshiva Museum does even one show every couple of years as deep as the Oxford Library show, I really need to make it part of my regular museum rotation.
Whatever your interests, it’s likely that something on view at the Center for Jewish History will align. Woe unto you if your interests are diverse, you’ll likely spend more time there than you intended. I mean, woe in a good way, of course. Seeing and learning more than you expected must count as among the best of all possible woes.
For Reference:
| Address | 15 West 16th Street, Manhattan |
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| Website | |
| Cost | Yeshiva University Museum General Admission: $8. Other exhibition spaces free. |
| Other Relevant Links |
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Temple Emanu-El is a beautiful, imposing synagogue, one of several great houses of worship on the green stretch of Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The temple itself is shut tight like a fortress between services, However, if you go around to a side entrance on East 65th Street and ask the guard, you can visit the Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum, which hosts temporary exhibits on various aspects of Jewish life, faith, and culture.
Barkley L. Hendricks, Lawdy Mama, 1969, from the portraits show. Arresting today, must’ve been even more so when new. To quote the wall text, “Hendricks uses the master’s tools to dismantle his house.”
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The first time I visited the Jewish Museum, in July of 2017, it was in the midst of re-installing its permanent collection, taking a floor and a substantial part of the reason to visit offline. I had doubts concerning the temporary shows on at the time— odd curatorial decisions, highly esoteric subject matter and general kitschiness all nudged me away from strongly recommending the museum.
Visiting the National Jazz Museum made me think about the regular reports of the death of jazz, which may even be deader than opera at this point. I wondered if having a museum to it serves as yet another piece of evidence for the demise of the form? They have a display with photos of young jazz musicians, and sorta reach toward hip-hop, kinda. But really nothing I saw there suggests anything innovative or interesting has happened in jazz since the 1970s.
The China Institute occupies second floor space in a fairly anonymous office building in the Financial District. It appears they will soon move to much more prominent ground-floor space, which should help drive awareness and attract visitors.
A pair of Christian Louboutin boots laboriously decorated with antique glass beads by Jamie Okuma, of the Louiseño and Shoshone-Bannock tribes.
The National Museum of the American Indian’s George Gustav Heye Center is one of the Smithsonian Institution’s two New York outposts (along with the 
Indeed, the idea of turning a building focused on trade, from an era that unabashedly glorified the commercial impulses that ended up dispossessing the Native American tribes of their lands, into a museum for those nations…well. I find it pretty ironic.
Max Vityk’s “Outcrops” series of tactile, colorful, geologic abstract paintings installed in the third floor library and dining room. Sometimes abstract art clashes with classical decor, but these go better than they have any right to. Compliments to the curator for a beautiful installation.
First Floor: A brief introduction to Ukraine, the place, its people, history and culture. It includes a nice touchscreen display for those who want a deeper dive, and an overview of notable Ukrainian Americans.
