The Jewish Museum’s Discomfort with Religion

Menachem Wecker’s essay on Scenes from the Collection, the latest permanent exhibition at the Jewish Museum of New York, is so wide-ranging in its erudition, and so on-target in its insights, that although I’m a partial insider (having worked at the museum a half-century ago), I found it very impressive indeed.

Wecker, a relatively young man, is in possession of a Jewish education that is probably atypical of most of the museum’s visitors. By contrast, I’m a senior citizen who risks sounding like the character of the Grumpy Old Man played by Dana Carvey on the old Saturday Night Live—the kind who carries on about how much better things were in the past, and that’s the way we liked it.

In truth, though, I can’t say I really liked it better growing up in a world of Jews who still lowered their voices to whisper the word “Jewish” in restaurant conversations, or who swelled with unseemly pride when the 1950 recording by Pete Seeger and the Weavers of the Israeli folk song Tzena, Tzena, Tzena gave “us” temporary standing on the Hit Parade.