2017 Report to the Community

President’s Message: Making History

Perhaps you have seen our new poster commemorating the landmark status of the Lloyd Street Synagogue.  It celebrates the fact that our museum site is a place where history happened.  In 1845 a small group of German immigrants, overcoming the prejudices of their time, established the first permanent religious structure for the Jewish community in the state of Maryland.  It is a landmark not only for Jews, but for all Americans who share in our heritage of pluralism and religious liberty.

But the Jewish Museum of  Maryland is not just a place where history happened, it’s also a place where history is made – every year, every day.  FY ’17 was no exception.  We made history when we invited Baltimore’s distinguished “alumni” Morris Offit and Alfred Moses to speak here last September as part of Baltimore’s first Jewish Family Reunion.

We made history when we brought Henrietta Szold back to life, our living history character performing at 18 venues, including an audience of 900 students at Szold’s alma mater, Western High School. 

We made history when, as the Baltimore venue for the “My Family Story” project, nearly 100 students came to JMM with craft projects symbolizing their own Jewish roots – and made history again, when for the third year in a row a Baltimore student was selected to receive the grand prize of attending the international competition at Beit Hatfutsot in Israel.

We preserved history last summer when we worked with the families of survivors of the Holocaust to create the collages of the Human Memory Project that concluded the Remembering Auschwitz exhibit. And we truly made history when we opened that exhibit this March and had our greatest March museum attendance in at least five years.

So what history will we make together in FY ’18?  The plans are ambitious and the signs are auspicious.  We will serve as the stage for three new exhibits.  Our recently opened Just Married! – Wedding Stories from Jewish Maryland will continue into September.  The exhibit is a showcase for our growing collection of materials related to the life cycles of the community.  Just Married!  illustrates both common rituals and the enormous diversity and changes over the last 180 years of weddings. It takes history to the family level. 

By contrast our next offering, Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage makes a global connection.  These records, books and objects document a once vibrant culture, sent into diaspora by cruel oppression.  Confiscated by Saddam Hussein’s government and nearly destroyed in a flooded building, these artifacts were restored  by the National Archives, and the best examples were turned into this great traveling show (in a project originally led by JMM Director Marvin Pinkert) .  And our history-making plans won’t stop there. Plans for a third exhibit next year are now being developed.

Of course, it’s not just our exhibits that “make history.”  Thanks to a grant from The Associated, we will be restoring our in-house Archivist position and that individual will help us make new discoveries about our past in thousands of photos and records we house.  Our programs team is already hard at work preparing for both weighty anniversaries in the next year (including 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, 70th anniversary of the voyage of the Exodus, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration) and hefty celebrations of everyday joys (e.g. the Great Kugel Cook-Off).  Our education team is creating new tours of our neighborhood, even as Historic Jonestown undergoes its most dramatic development in more than a decade.

I want to congratulate the history-making donors and volunteers who are listed in this report.  I hope even more of you will join us in the year to come.

Sincerely,

Duke Zimmerman

JMM Board President, (2015 – 2017)

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