Derfner Judaica Museum
Monday – Friday 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Jacob Reingold Pavilion
Special Sunday and Holiday Hours:
December 25: 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
December 27: 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Tradition and Remembrance: Treasures of the Derfner Judaica Museum
Now On View
Hanukkah Lamp
Bezalel School
Jerusalem, ca. 1920-29
Copper alloy: cast, pierced;
copper: stamped
Ralph and Leuba Baum Collection
|
Kiddush Cup
Bezalel School
Jerusalem, ca. 1910
Silver: filigree, engraved
Ralph and Leuba Baum Collection
|
Hanukkah Lamp
Frankfurt-am-Main, ca. 1750-60
Silver: repoussé, chased, traced, punched, pierced, cast
Ralph and Leuba Baum Collection
|
Shabbat/Festival Lamp
Andreas Schneider (German, active 18th century)
Augsburg, 1765
Silver: cast, engraved
Ralph and Leuba Baum Collection
|
Matzah Bag
Girls’ Orphan Home
Jerusalem, late 19th century
Velvet: embroidered with metallic thread and couched fish scales
Gift of Hannah Lazarus Fraenkel
|
Torah Case (Tik)
Kashan, Persia, before 1950
Wood: painted; fabric
|
Decalogue
New York, late 19th century
Wood: carved, painted, gold leaf
The Hebrew Home at Riverdale Archive
|
Zygmunt Menkes (American, b. Poland, 1896-1986)
Cohanim Blessing, ca. 1940s
Oil on canvas
Gift of Erica and Ludwig Jesselson and Family in Memory of Leo Forchheimer
|
The Derfner Judaica Museum occupies a newly expanded 5,000-square-foot exhibition space in the Jacob Reingold Pavilion at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale. It is the focal point for a wide range of educational and exhibition programming for residents and visitors alike. Completion of the Museum was funded in part by a furnishings grant received from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. With approximately 250 objects, the inaugural exhibition, Tradition and Remembrance: Treasures of the Derfner Judaica Museum, explores the intersections of Jewish history and memory. The stories of objects used in traditional Jewish practice are interpreted in light of the role of memory in shaping both individual and communal identities. Among the featured objects in the exhibition are a silver filigree kiddush cup, ca. 1911, and an early copper alloy Hanukkah lamp, from the famed Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts founded in Jerusalem in 1906. Other objects relating to Jewish practice come from near and far, including a set of 18th century German Torah implements from Meerholz Germany and a velvet fish-scale embroidered matzah cover from turn-of-the-century Jerusalem.
The Judaica Museum of the Hebrew Home was founded in 1982 when Riverdale residents Ralph and Leuba Baum donated their collection of Jewish ceremonial art to the Home. A refugee from Nazi persecution, Ralph Baum (1907-1984) and his wife, Leuba (d. 1997), had an intense desire to preserve and pass on to future generations the memory embodied in the objects they collected, the majority of which were used primarily by European Jews before the Holocaust. In 2008 the Judaica Museum was named in honor of benefactors Helen and Harold Derfner and is opening in this newly furnished space where it is hoped the active engagement of visitors will re-animate the objects presented here.
BACK TO TOP |
