• An Unrealized Vision:The "American Jewish Historical Exhibition" of 1901–1902¹
• Jeffrey Shandler (bio)

On June 27, 1901, the New York Times reported on "A Jewish Exhibition," planned to be presented "in this city during the Winter of 1901 and 1902" by the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), founded as a learned society in 1892. The committee appointed by AJHS to oversee the planning of the exhibition included "many prominent persons," among them Oscar Straus, Max Kohler, and Joseph Jacobs, all of New York; Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia; and others based in Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Galveston, and San Francisco. Presiding over the committee was Cyrus Adler, a librarian at the Smithsonian Institution and a leading figure in several American Jewish institutions, including AJHS. The New York Times article mentioned some of the items that AJHS intended to display, singling out "Columbus's earliest records of [the] discovery [of America] written to Jews in Spain" and "[George] Washington's letters to Jews."

The extensive, wide-ranging scope envisioned for this exhibition was evinced by plans to show "a collection of all books written by the Jews of America or pertaining to American Judaism." Also, alongside objects relating the long history of Jews' presence in America, "it has been determined to give Jews from Germany and Russia"—that is, immigrants who would have arrived in the United States within the preceding half-century or so (and, in the case of Jews from the Russian Empire, were then coming to America at an unprecedented rate)—their "proper space." In addition to objects pertaining specifically to Jewish life in America, the display would also include "an international exhibit of things pertaining to ecclesiastical art and to Jewish antiquities."²

The proposed exhibition would be the first of its kind in the United States. Indeed, until that date, public exhibitions of Jewish material culture anywhere had been very limited. Two major exhibitions had been presented in Europe during the previous century: a display of the [End Page 367] Judaica collection of composer Isaac Strauss at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris and the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, which had been mounted in London's Royal Albert Hall for three months in 1887. Jewish ceremonial objects had also been included in larger displays on world religions at American world's fairs in several cities in the 1880s and 1890s. None of these exhibitions addressed the history of Jews in America.

By the end of 1901, however, less than half a year after the announcement in the New York Times, AJHS leaders decided to postpone the exhibition for a year and to "extend the work of the society on…the question of the advisability of holding an American Jewish Historical Exhibition."³ By the end of 1902, AJHS decided to table plans for the exhibition indefinitely, and the organization never pursued the exhibition further.

Despite it being an unrealized project, the proposed American Jewish Historical Exhibition offers insights into the developing notion of placing Jewish items on public view as a new Jewish cultural practice. The planned exhibition marked a threshold in identifying what might constitute American Jewish material culture and conceptualizing its significance both for Jews in the United States and for their Christian neighbors. Shortly after the first temporary displays of Jewish ceremonial objects, manuscripts, and other items had taken place in Europe and the United States during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, efforts to create institutionalized collections of these materials were inaugurated on both sides of the Atlantic. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the opening of the first Jewish museum in Europe (in Vienna, in 1895) and the beginnings of the oldest Jewish museum in the United States (what eventually became the Jewish Museum of New York, in 1904). The exhibition envisioned by AJHS drew on some of these initiatives for inspiration, while addressing a particular focus on American Jewry.

The records of this proposed project include discussions of what items to put on display and how to arrange them, as well as practical concerns regarding the exhibition's venue, promotion, and costs. Moreover, these discussions redounded to larger issues: the mission of AJHS as a learned society; how...

• 未实现的愿景：1901-1902 年的“美国犹太人历史展览” ¹
• 杰弗里·桑德勒（生平）

1901 年 6 月 27 日，纽约时报报道了“犹太人展览”，该展览计划由美国犹太历史协会 (AJHS) 在“1901 年和 1902 年的冬天在这个城市”举办，该协会是在1892 年，AJHS 任命监督展览规划的委员会包括“许多知名人士”，其中包括来自纽约的 Oscar Straus、Max Kohler 和 Joseph Jacobs；费城的 Mayer Sulzberger；以及其他位于巴尔的摩、芝加哥、辛辛那提、加尔维斯顿和旧金山的公司。委员会主席是赛勒斯·阿德勒 (Cyrus Adler)，他是史密森尼学会 (Smithsonian Institution) 的图书管理员，也是包括 AJHS 在内的多个美国犹太机构的领军人物。纽约时报文章提到了 AJHS 打算展示的一些项目，特别提到了“哥伦布写给西班牙犹太人的关于 [美洲] 发现的最早记录”和“[乔治] 华盛顿写给犹太人的信件”。

为这次展览设想的广泛、广泛的范围体现在计划展示“由美国犹太人撰写的或与美国犹太教有关的所有书籍的集合”。此外，除了与犹太人在美国存在的悠久历史相关的物品外，“它已决定提供来自德国和俄罗斯的犹太人”——即本应在前半个世纪左右抵达美国的移民（并且，就来自俄罗斯帝国的犹太人而言，他们当时正以前所未有的速度来到美国）——他们的“适当空间”。除了专门与美国犹太人生活有关的物品外，展览还将包括“与教会艺术和犹太文物有关的国际展览”。^2个

拟议的展览将是美国首次举办此类展览。事实上，在那之前，任何地方的犹太物质文化公开展览都非常有限。上个世纪，欧洲举办了两次大型展览：在 1878 年巴黎世界博览会上展出作曲家艾萨克·施特劳斯的[End Page 367]犹太收藏，以及在伦敦皇家博物馆举办的盎格鲁-犹太历史展览1887 年在阿尔伯特大厅停留了三个月。在 1880 年代和 1890 年代的美国世界博览会上，犹太人的礼仪物品也被包括在有关世界宗教的大型展览中。这些展览都没有涉及美国犹太人的历史。

然而，到 1901 年底，在纽约时报宣布后不到半年，AJHS 领导人决定将展览推迟一年，并“延长协会在……举办的可取性问题上的工作”美国犹太人历史展览。” ³到 1902 年底，AJHS 决定无限期地制定展览计划，该组织再也没有继续举办展览。

尽管这是一个未实现的项目，但拟议的美国犹太人历史展览提供了对将犹太项目作为一种新的犹太文化实践置于公众视野中的发展理念的见解。计划中的展览标志着确定什么可能构成美国犹太物质文化并概念化其对美国犹太人及其基督教邻居的意义的门槛。在 19 世纪最后 25 年欧洲和美国首次临时展示犹太人的礼仪物品、手稿和其他物品后不久，大西洋两岸开始努力创建这些材料的制度化收藏. 二十世纪之交见证了欧洲第一家犹太博物馆的开放（在维也纳，1895 年）和美国最古老的犹太博物馆的开端（最终于 1904 年成为纽约犹太博物馆）。AJHS 设想的展览借鉴了其中一些举措的灵感，同时特别关注美国犹太人。

这个拟议项目的记录包括讨论要展示什么项目和如何安排它们，以及关于展览地点、促销和成本的实际问题。此外，这些讨论引发了更大的问题：AJHS 作为一个学术社会的使命；如何...