More than just The Art et l'Histoire du Judaïsme

On Thursday, I visited the Museum of Jewish History and Art in Paris. The experience provided me not only a slightly more sophisticated understanding of Jewish history, culture, religion, etc., but also some new thoughts on "culture"—whatever we interpret that word to mean. 

Of course, I know that the Israelites did not go from 40 years in the wilderness with Moses straight to Europe in the early 20th century. I know that the Holocaust does not define Jewish culture. I know this, logically, but my formal education and life experiences—at least until Thursday—did little to inform me otherwise... 

Le Musee d'Art et l'Histoire du Judaïsme differs from other museums dedicated to Jewish history that I have visited here in Paris; rather than creating an image of “European Jews” as a single, homogenous unit (as many museums and texts do), it tells the story of the unique forms that Judaism takes in various parts of Europe and North Africa. By taking the visitor through specific details about Judaism (holidays, traditions, art, etc.) the museum emphasizes diversity while still demonstrating the parallels that do unify Jewish culture through history and across geographic and cultural lines. 

The Museum of the Art and History of Judaism reminds its visitors that all of the people that identify with a culture or a religion are not the same. No single image, event, place, person, anything, really, can entirely define a "culture." 

We cannot expect a museum dedicated to the history of Judaism to omit the terrible events we have come to call the Holocaust. This one though, unlike most museums and monuments that I have personally visited, did not present the plight of the Jewish people as disproportionately important compared to their triumphs. Instead, the Musee d’Art et d’Histoire de Judaism exhibits individuals, real stories, art, tradition, and history dating back to the middle ages, to show the seemingly obvious but overshadowed truth—that Judaism existed and thrived before the Holocaust, and that it continues to do so today.

Perhaps, as a result, this uncommonly positive tribute to Jewish history does more to honor the genocide victims than other museums and memorials to the Holocaust, like the Memorial de la Shoa just down the street. We can’t comprehend 6 million Jewish victims. We don’t know the faces or the lives or the souls of the names lined up, as if waiting for roll-call, on a memorial wall. What we can comprehend is culture, tradition, and family. Weddings, holidays, and art. Individuals, stories, and faces.  In a way, this museum gives Jewish history a quality that Naziism sought to destroy—humanity.

I don’t mean to imply that the Museum de l’Art et l’Histoire Judaism somehow accurately defines Jewish faith and culture the way that the memory of the Shoa cannot...

"Culture" is complicated; it is made up of unique individuals, and perhaps it is something more than the sum of these. "History" is complicated; it made up of more than just the events deemed worthy of putting in a 7th grade textbook. 

No event, piece of art, icon, personality, or collection of artifacts can really define a "culture", its history, or—most importantly—the people and lives that these abstract concepts describe.