Temple Israel

Paper Tefillah

Paper Tefillah is a remarkable series of papercuts by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik. The series is an artistic interpretation of the elements of a contemporary American progressive Jewish prayer service, with 16 papercuts representing major prayers. It will be on display through the end of January, 2012. (Meet Isaac and learn about his work at "Temple Tuesdays" on Jan. 10, 2012, at 7pm.)

Letters to Sala: A Young Woman’s Life in Nazi Labor CampsIn 1991, as 67-year-old Sala Garncarz Kirschner prepared herself for triple bypass surgery, she opened a painful chapter of her past. For nearly five decades she had shielded her three children from her Holocaust years, never talking about her PolishJewish family’s experiences during World War II.

One summer day that year, she approached her daughter, Ann, carrying a red cardboard box that had once contained a “Spill and Spell” game. She held it out, saying, “You should have this.” Within the box was a small, worn brown leather portfolio stuffed with letters, postcards, and scraps of paper—an amazing array of Polish, German, and Yiddish writing, some of it barely legible, tiny and cramped, some of it beautiful calligraphy. The postcards were covered with stamp-size Hitlers and thick “Z” stamps. “These are my letters from the war,” Sala told her daughter.

That afternoon, Sala began to fill in the missing pieces of her history. She was taken from home when she was 16 and survived five years in seven different Nazi forced labor camps. Saving the letters became inextricably linked with saving her life. The letters were not mere pieces of paper: they were the people she loved, friends and family waiting for her return. She risked her life to preserve the letters, hiding them during line-ups, handing them off to friends, throwing them under a building, even burying them, but always managing somehow to take them with her from camp to camp.

Liberated in 1945, Sala came to the United States as a war bride, and hid her papers in a closet. Five years of her life were also hidden until the day she revealed the existence of more than 300 letters, photographs, and documents.

Sala’s story is, above all, a story of life and one young woman’s way of seeing beyond years of horror. From her letters, we learn about friendship and love, Jewish life in occupied Poland, Nazi labor camps, the intensely human need to rebuild life after the catastrophe of war, and the ability of words to give and sustain life.

--Jill Vexler, Ph.D., Guest Curator;
Ann Kirschner, Ph.D., Consultant to Letters to Sala;
Debórah Dwork, Ph.D., Robert Jan van Pelt, Ph. D.,
Holocaust Historians, Consultants to Letters to Sala

Read coverage in The Commercial Appeal newspaper.
Commercial Appeal article, September 29, 2011

Letters to Sala: A Young Woman’s Life in Nazi Labor Camps, which is sponsored by the Robert T. Goldsmith Museum Fund, will be on display Sept. 6-Oct. 30, 2011 on Sundays from 10am-Noon and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10am-2pm.

Best of the ShowJune, 2011
Many of us have antiques in our homes that have been passed down from generation to generation. None are as cherished as Jewish ritual objects, or Judaica, used by the generations of Jews before us and which helped to keep our Jewish way of life alive. The Temple Israel Museum's newly installed special exhibit -- Best of the Show -- features those pieces of Judaica appraised as 'most valuable' by one of the nation's leading appraisers of Judaica during the Museum's Judaica Roadshow late last year when more than 60 people brought more than 100 pieces of Judaica to be identified and appraised. While the Judaica in this exhibit was deemed Best of the Show, all Judaica is valuable for its deep personal and religious meaning. The Temple Israel Museum is grateful to everyone who participated in the first Judaica Roadshow and especially for the generosity of those whose Judaica is on display so that others may enjoy these pieces as well.

Judaica RoadshowThe Temple Museum was proud to host the Judaica Roadshow with Jonathan Greenstein, one of the nation's leading appraisers of Judaica, on October 31, 2010.

 

Flight: Chagall, Miro and the Plight of RefugeesThis stunning exhibition, was on loan from Josh and Joanna Lipman, featured twelve works by 20th Century masters representing the struggle of refugees and their search for freedom. This series was organized by the International Rescue Committee, which was established in 1933 to aid European refugees escaping the Nazis. Several of the artists represented are of Jewish heritage and were directly helped by the IRC.

Read The Commercial Appeal's article regarding this fabulous exhibit.

Temple Israel MuseumThe Temple Israel Museum houses and proudly displays a remarkable treasure of Jewish ritual art featuring The Herta and Justin H. Adler Judaica Collection.

Through its symbolic content or function, Jewish art illustrates the creative expression of the Jewish people based on their historical and religious experiences from antiquity to the present.

The Adler Collection takes us into the homes and synagogues of places far away and people long since deceased.

It includes the works of artisans from Germany, France, Morocco, Egypt, Poland, Russia, Israel, and America.

Friends of the MuseumMake your donation (here for members and here for non-members) online and become a Friend of the Museum!

Menorah Display December, 2009Beautiful, hand-crafted, original menorahs were on display in Temple's atrium foyer between the sancutary and Daniziger chapel.

Pictures of ResistanceThe Temple Israel Museum was proud to hose a special exhibition entitled, Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman, featuring the only known Jewish partisan photographer during World War II. (Read The Commercial Appeal article, September 29, 2009, about the exhibit.)

The exhibition ran from September 1 through October 31, 2009.

Pictures of Resistance is a rare and compelling exhibition of 30 photographs that depict a heroic band of tough partisans– some Jewish, some not – who fought the Nazis and their collaborators.

Armed with only a camera, Schulman captured unforgettable images of camaraderie, horror and loss, bravery and triumph. Each photograph poses probing, and sometimes haunting, questions about the people whose lives were documented by Schulman, whose talents preserved for history the faces of nameless heroes who risked their lives to fight the century's greatest evil.

Born in Poland in 1924, Faye Schulman received her first camera from her brother when she was 13. It was that camera which ultimately saved her life and allowed her to later document Jewish partisan activity.

During the war, Schulman traveled with the Russian Moltava brigade, whose encampment was near her hometown. Along with serving as a doctor's aide, Schulman also took the photographs featured in this exhibition. She developed and printed two-inch negatives beneath blankets in the forest. Schulman is the only known Jewish photographer to capture on film the Jewish partisan resistance during the Holocaust.

Pictures of Resistance is produced by the Jewish Partisan Education Foundation and is brought to Temple Israel by generous local sponsors.

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