Major Jewish museums in Stockholm and Bucharest — both housed in former synagogues — have reopened in the past week after refurbishment and with new core exhibits, enhancing the network of Jewish museums that stretches across Europe.
The Swedish Jewish Museum reopened on June 6 with a new core exhibition and in new premises — Stockholm’s oldest surviving synagogue building.
The synagogue, located at Själagårdsgatan 19, was built in 1795 and functioned until 1870, when it was sold by the Jewish community and the Great Synagogue in Stockholm — still functioning today — was built. After its closure as a synagogue, the museum says, the building was used as a police station, an auction house and a sailors’ church.
The museum was founded in 1987 and since 1992 had been located in Stockholm at Hälsingegatan 2, in a former school building.
It closed in 2016 to renovate the new premises in the old synagogue and revamp its core exhibition on the history and culture of Jews in Sweden.
The new exhibition includes for the first time the restored original Ark (Aron ha Kodesh) that once stood in the Själagårdsgatan synagogue and which to date had been held in the Historical Museum.
During the renovation of the old synagogue building, wall and ceiling paintings probably dating from the early 19th century were discovered under thick layers of paint.
According to a news release from the Museum, restorers working on the old synagogue building were tipped off when they found a bill from a painter dating from 1811 that described how he had decorated the walls. Among other things, he noted that he had painted 10 half-arches decorated with rosettes, using bronze-colored paint.
Access our JHE section on Sweden
In Bucharest, the Museum of the History and Culture of Jews in Romania reopened on June 7 in the former Holy Union Synagogue after five years of work to restore the building and create a new core exhibition.
The synagogue, located at 3 Mămulari Str, was originally built by the tailors’ guild in 1836 as a place of worship for local tailors craft union. It was listed as a national monument in 2004.
The museum now bears the name of the former head of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities (FEDROM), Nicolae Cajal; when it first opened in 1978 it bore the name of the then-Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, the driving force behind it.
The synagogue has been fully restored, and the new exhibition uses modern museological techniques, including multimedia, to tell the story of Jewish heritage, history, and culture in Romania.
Quoted in local media, museum director Carmen Hannah Ioviţu said what was new was the focus on Jewish life.
We wanted to show, on the ground floor, what the Jewish house looks like, what the Jewish kitchen looks like, and some information about the holidays, and, on the other side, the Jewish participation in Romania’s history. In the back we tried to recreate the ambience of a Jewish school, a kindergarten where the first letters are learned, the first prayers.
The museum also includes an art gallery featuring works by Romanian Jewish artists.
Watch a video of the opening ceremony (lots of speeches — but you can also see the building).
Rabbi Rosen, who died in 1994, wrote that opening the museum was one of the tools he used in the intricate power game he played with the Communist authorities under Nicolae Ceausescu.
In memoirs published in 1990 — Dangers, Tests and Miracles: The Remarkable Life Story of Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen of Romania, as told to Joseph Finklestone. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990) — Rosen wrote that he decided in 1977 to “establish a collection of Romanian-Jewish historical documents and to house them in a museum” in order to counter the Communist policy of “minimizing the importance of the Romanian Jewish community.” The Jews, he said, “had lived in the country for 600 years and it was a holy duty to record their achievements, their tragedies and their joys.”
“Following my well-tried method of taking unilateral action first and receiving approval later, I did not seek any permit for establishing the Jewish museum,” Rosen recalled.
“When all the exhibits were in place, I invited the Minister of Cults to the opening. He came and did not voice any criticism of the fait accompli. I think he realized that the museum was an essential institution. In any case, it was too late for him to display disapproval. To the same ‘inauguration’ ceremony, I also invited the American and Israeli Ambassadors and Philip Klutznick, president of the WJC [World Jewish Congress]. They came and showed their appreciation of a museum which tries to do justice to one of the great Jewish communities of Europe, its religious splendor and cultural achievements.”
Read article about the opening of the Bucharest museum (in Romanian)
Click here to see a Facebook photo gallery of the opening
Access our JHE section on Romania
1 comment on “Revamped Jewish museums open in former synagogues in Stockholm and Bucharest”
A famous nazi whose initials were a.h. ordered a museum to be set up in Prague as an exhibit of a vanished race. Jewish religious articles were collected from all of the countries under the nazis and displayed there. It is still there. Is Europe becoming a museum to the Jews who used to live there? Did the nazis finally accomplish what they started out to do? In twenty or thirty years my grandchildren and great-grandchildren may all be living in Israel. In the meantime may God Bless America.