The tradition of sending New Year’s greetings for the Jewish holidays dates from the 14th century; however, it was not until the mass production of printed material and affordable stationery that the practice became widespread. The first postcard was invented in Vienna, 1869. It was then just a blank square of thin card. The classic picture postcard followed shortly after and was quickly taken up by the public, becoming so popular that the years between 1898 and 1920 have been referred to as the ‘Great Post Card Craze.’ During this craze, the practice of sending Jewish New Year postcards also ..read more

Lisa Shames- Learning Manager: Families, Interfaith and Community Arguably, the most important part of a Jewish Culture CPD day is lunch. We decided to head over to Hummus Bar on Golders Green road. The first part of the menu listed their signature homemade hummus, made twice daily. The hummus can be ordered plain or topped with any number of delicious items such as falafel, grilled mushrooms, salt beef, spicy beef, or even a sloppy joe version with minced beef, mushrooms and egg. The menu also featured various salads, sides and mains including schnitzel, sabich, burgers and brisket. Seeing a ..read more

Foreword from Frances Jeens - Head of Learning Learning is central to the museum’s values and here in the Learning Team, we like to practice what we preach!  This means that twice a year we book a full day of CPD and off we go to learn something new. With the school summer holidays just starting and new staff joining the team these past few months now was a perfect time.  Shereen Hunte- Learning Officer Our first stop was to Hoop Lane Cemetery. Founded in the late 19th Century, Hoop Lane was one of the first Jewish spaces to be established in Golders Green (before the mass migr ..read more

Krakow – Warsaw – Gdansk, 15-25 July 2018     By Kathrin Pieren, Collections Manager and Curator. Every four years the European Association for Jewish Studies organises an international conference that brings together hundreds of delegates and covers topics from archaeology to Talmud and rabbinics, Jewish languages and literatures, culture, history and arts. This year the conference was held in Krakow and presented an important novelty: an entire section on Jewish museology with ten sessions of 3-4 papers each. I presented the Jewish Museum’s ‘Family from A to B (Armistice to Brexit ..read more

By Charlotte Hafner Here at the Jewish Museum London, we have schools coming in for our Judaism or history workshops almost every day. A big amount of the students that come with these schools have a lot of questions they want to ask about Judaism, however, they sometimes seem to feel a bit shy about directly approaching either their teachers or us from the Learning Team. It might be because they’re afraid of offending us or saying something insensitive about the Jewish community by accident. Or it might be because it is a question about Jewish LGBT, or because they just think that their quest ..read more

We hope you enjoy this guest blog post by Julian Maddison, an expert on all things René Goscinny. Julian is a true enthusiast and has been an invaluable source of information to us throughout the development and display of this exhibition. He has assisted us with fact-checking as well as sharing incredible stories and fascinating details about Asterix. Julian has unearthed UK-specific materials for us, such as the popular 1960s Valiant and Ranger comics, in which Asterix, pre-official translation, appears as ‘the ancient Brit with bags of grit.’ We are incredibly grateful to Julian for all his ..read more

By Hannah and Zara, work experience students in the Learning Team. During Pride month, we have been considering what it is to be part of both an LGBT+ and a Jewish community and the intersection between them, by looking at images within our collection.   We have been looking at different images, the first ones being drawings of David and Jonathon by Simeon Solomon. Solomon was born in London in 1840 to a middle-class Jewish family. He was gay and found creative and unique ways to express his sexuality through art. His early works were influenced greatly by Shakespeare and the Bible. As he ..read more

Theatre costumes worn by the award-winning Jewish actor, Henry Goodman, during productions of The Merchant of Venice and Fiddler on the Roof have recently entered the collection of Jewish Museum London thanks to the actor’s generous donation. Before storing them safely away, we took the opportunity to set up a 2-day photoshoot (yes, it really takes that long!) to photograph these costumes in full. We built the looks up item by item and took pictures during every step. via GIPHY via GIPHY ..read more

By Karen Van Coevorden Following on from Emma’s blog about Esther Rafer, another family which we have explored at our recent Curious Minds workshops is the Isaacs family. Using a series of photographs and objects from our collection, we set individuals the challenge of trying to piece together an understanding of the Isaac family history. We know that Philip Isaacs was born in Russia and came to England in about 1875 with his wife, Kate (known as Kitty) and his eldest son, Israel. Just by looking at the photographs, one can presume that Philip and Kitty only had sons as it is only boys w ..read more

By Emma Crew When planning our Curious Minds sessions for people living with dementia we decided to include objects and photographs relating to specific people who lived in the Jewish East End. I chose to show some of our items linked to Esther Rafer. Her descendant Sheila donated a fascinating collection of items from her life including family photographs, shop receipts, birthday cards and letters. From these, we can piece together her story from her birth in Russia to a family of butchers to her marriage to Abraham Rafer and the butcher’s shop they ran on Hessel Street. There are family pho ..read more