People of Book- PJ Library at ANU Tour

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People of Book- PJ Library at ANU Tour

Time: 75 minutes

Goals:

  • Emphasize diverse modern Jewish identity around the world
  • Follow development of historic Jewish populations using texts, languages and creative platforms
  • Show Jewish storytelling over different platforms, such as books, film, food, music and more

Introduction: ANU Museum, renovation, Jewish peoplehood, “You are part of the story”

Third Floor: Modern mosaic of Jewish life today and past 150 years. Give orientation of floor.

  • Being Jewish Today
    • Question: Spend a few minutes with the individuals and families.
    • Emphasize diversity of Jewish families and individuals. ANU acts as a mirror to reflect what the Jewish world today looks like.
  • Theater, Dance, Film, Music
    • Ask group to pick one to discuss with you.
    • Question: What is Jewish theater/dance/film/music to you?
    • Show that Jews have always taken outside influence from, and have influenced, the cultures in which they’ve lived.
  • Languages
    • Different Jewish languages (Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic) emphasizes the point that Jews have always taken outside influence from, and have influenced, the cultures in which they’ve lived.
    • Hebrew vs. Diaspora Jewish languages poster: Strength of language; efforts throughout Jewish history to control which languages were used.
  • Literature
    • Question: What about these authors and their work makes it Jewish? Is there such thing as Jewish literature?
    • Point out PJ Library books in drawer
    • Discuss Franz Kafka, S.Y. Agnon, Albert Memmi, Emma Lazarus
  • Jewish food interactive
    • Question: Is there a special food that you eat with family/friends on holidays or special occasions? Encourage discussion on Jewish food.
    • Show diversity of Jewish cultures via food
    • Discuss how food is a creative and practical platform to engage in identity and personal, familial and national stories
  • Women Trailblazers
  • Luminaries
    • Question: What quality makes someone a luminary? Who is a hero of yours?
    • Point out Kafka book.
    • Explain section. Give group 5 minutes to explore/watch Shaanan Street video.

Second Floor: After seeing where we are today, we ask: How did we get here? Going on the Jewish Journey together. We will see the development of historic Jewish populations using texts, languages and creative platforms.

  • Video: The Masa
  • Wall of Communities portraits
    • Osnat Barzani
      • Importance of learning, tradition, texts and teaching
      • Significance of Jewish woman as a Rosh Yeshiva in 17th century Kurdistan
  • Transparent dresses
    • Question: What group(s) have remained transparent throughout history? What can we do to ensure history is inclusive of all?
  • Ashkenaz and Sepharad
    • Further development of diverse global Jewish communities. Different languages and traditions emerging. 
    • Include Megillat Esther and story behind it.
  • Faith, Thought and Creativity
    • Kapparot
      • Explain piece
      • Question: What kind of Jewish traditions do you know and love that have been modified to fit modernity?
      • Question: Which modern sins would you add to this piece?
  • Modernity
    • Compare these four family photos with family photos from 3rd floor.
    • Show two objects that show Jewish tradition (wedding ceremony and kashrut) from two different communities and two different creative platforms
      • Moroccan dress (Between the East and the Winds of the West)
      • Yiddish Chicken Shop sign (Great Migration)

First Floor: Halleluja! Synagogues Past and Present

  • Choose 2 synagogues to compare and contrast

What Makes Jewish Literature Jewish?

A comparison of the writers mentioned below (whose book or picture is on display in the Jewish Literature section on the 3rd floor), may help to ponder the question ‘What makes Jewish Literature Jewish?’ and stimulate further discussion on the topic.

Below is a little information to reflect on the cultural origin of Kafka, Agnon, Lazarus, and Memmi, the languages they used in their writing, and their attitude to Judaism and Zionism. 

1. Franz Kafka (1883–1924)

  • Born and lived most of his life in Prague
  • Was writing primarily in German but also spoke Czech (because of the multicultural environment in which he was raised)
  • Interested in learning Jewish languages, especially Hebrew and Yiddish
  • Fascinated by the idea of Zionism but never really considered moving to Palestine, contrary, for example, to his friend Prague Max Brod
  • Most of his work lacks direct references to Jews or Judaism 
  • There are direct Christian religious references though
  • Kafka on Jewish identity:
    • “What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself and should sit quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.” (Kafka’s dairy entry, 1914)
    • In the letter to his father (1919), Kafka reflects on Judaism practiced by assimilated “Western Jews,” a Judaism that turned out to be for them an “insufficient scrap […] a mere nothing, a joke – not even a joke.”
  • On display on the 3rd floor: Kafka’s portrait, his quote, and his book Amerika

2. Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970)

  • Born in Buczacz, in eastern Galicia
  • His first published works were written in Hebrew and Yiddish, 
  • later (after he arrived in Palestine), he wrote only in Hebrew 
  • Attracted to Zionism, arrived at Yaffa in 1908, settled in Neve Tsedek, and abandoned his religious practices
  • In 1912 – 1924, stayed in Germany
  • After returning to Palestine, he settled down in Jerusalem and resumed an Orthodox way of life.
  • In his writing, he very explicitly alludes to classical Jewish texts, Jewish tradition, and life in Eastern Europe (including Hasidism) but also to the new milieu in Palestine
  • In his famous novel Tmol Shilshom (1945), “based on his personal experiences during the time of the Second Aliyah. […] Agnon follows the route of a young émigré on his way from Galicia to Palestine, and there, from Jaffa to Jerusalem, describing the unresolved conflict between his religious and emotional ties with the Diaspora and the challenges of the modern secular society facing him in the new land. In leading his protagonist to a tragic death, Agnon suggests that Zionist ideology offers no easy solution for the modern Jew.”
  • Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, together with German Jewish poet Nelly Sachs
    • He delivered his speech in Stockholm in Hebrew quoting Tanakh and Talmud repeatedly.
  • On display on the 3rd floor: Agnon’s portrait and his quote

3. Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)

  • Born and grew up in a Sephardi community in NYC
  • Was writing in English
  • Created primarily poetry reflecting the experience of the Sephardic community, Jewish themes
  • But also wrote: “My religious convictions … and the circumstances of my life have led me somewhat apart from my people,” (1877)
  • Used her poetry to support (and raise money) for Jewish refugees arriving in North America
  • Never publicly criticized her father but highlighted the prerogatives of powerful male figures in her poems of the 1870s.
  • “Years before the emergence of modern Zionism […], she spoke ardently on behalf of Jewish “repatriation” in Palestine. For her Zionism, she was ridiculed both by traditionalist Jews, who were put off by her secular patriotism, and by Reform Jews, who feared charges of dual nationality.”
  • Lazarus’s nationalist poems were admired and read by Zionist circles for many decades after her death
  • On display on the 3rd Floor: The Poetry of Emma Lazarus, Vol. 1 and her quote 

4. Albert Memmi (1920–2020)

  • Born in Tunisia to a mixed Jewish family of Tunisian Berber and Tunisian Italian origin
  • His parents intended to give him a Hebrew name but a town hall employee in Tunis insisted that he’s registered with a French name
  • Wrote primarily in French (but his mother tongue was Tunisian Judeo-Arabic)
  • He was supporting the independence Tunisian movement but was forced to move out of Tunisia because of his Jewish origin and French education
  • A left-wing Zionist who supported the Palestinian homeland
  • In his work, he was searching for ways to navigate his identity balancing between the East and the West
    • His most famous non-fiction work The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957) concerns the psychological effects of colonialism
  • Also wrote extensively on Jewish identity
    • In The Pillar of Salt (1953), a quasi-autobiographical novel, on the childhood of a Jew in Tunisia (colonized by France) at the beginning of the 20th century
  • On display on the 3rd floor: Memmi’s book Agar (Strangers) and his quote
    • Plot: Married couple in Tunis dealing with cultural differences between them that are revealed when they move from Paris to Tunis. He is a Tunisian Jew, a doctor who just graduated from a medical school in Paris; she is a Catholic from Alsace, a former chemistry student. The birth of their first child only multiplies their marital problems; “the forsaken liberal life and marital happiness are pitted against parental community traditions.”