Why Are There So Many Jewish Museums?

What is the point of building so many Jewish museums? There are more of them in the world than you might think: hundreds, possibly more than a thousand even if we don’t count the ones in Israel. The real question is why Jews build so many when so few people visit them. This is not a question that Edward Rothstein addresses in his sweeping and persuasive examination of “The Problem with Jewish Museums,” but it’s one that began to intrigue me as I had the opportunity to visit scores of such museums.

To be sure, there are Jewish museums like the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, both dealt with by Rothstein, where tourists must wait in line to enter. But even at major institutions like the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris, or for that matter Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History, you are likely to find yourself alone in the galleries. Visit the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum in New Brunswick, or the Jewish Museum of Włodawa in eastern Poland, and I guarantee solitude.

You have probably never heard of the Jewish Museum of Maine. It was created to save an old synagogue in Portland from crumbling into disrepair, which may be the most common reason for founding a Jewish museum. The lovingly restored building, “one of the oldest remaining European-style synagogues in continuous use in Maine,” continues to house prayer services, to host communal events, and to welcome visitors to rotating art exhibitions on the main floor as well as to a surprisingly poignant exhibition about the history of Jews in Maine in the upstairs gallery.