A couple weeks ago the American Jewish Press Association (AJPA) the professional group for Jewish journalists held its annual conference in Philadelphia. One of the activities designed to give attendees a diversion from the sessions was a trip to that city’s National Museum of American Jewish History.
What a fitting choice. When in 2010 this premier museum of the American Jewish community moved to its present $150 million building on Independence Mall a reviewer in the Forward had this to say:
A serious consideration of religion is also lacking. Only the slightest reference is made to Hasidism for example despite the fact that it constitutes arguably one of the most potent religious forces in American Jewish life today. It’s not that the history of faith or of the changing forms of practice is completely ignored. The origins of the various denominations are laid out — particularly … the first rabbinical ordination of the Reform movement … where frogs legs and shrimp were served.… But there is no real exploration of how American Jews have in large part moved away from religious practice or of what this says about the community.
So the museum was an altogether appropriate destination for an excursion of Jewish journalists whose publications for the most part lack any “serious consideration of religion” and make “only the slightest reference” to the virtues and vibrancy of chassidism and other sectors of Orthodoxy which constitute — no not “arguably ” but indisputably — some of “the most potent religious forces in American Jewish life today.” This way columnists and reporters for whom a large swath of the American Jewish community is simply invisible — except that is when there’s a scandal to be covered or some exotic practice or subversive person to highlighted — could walk from exhibit to exhibit without any challenge to their ignorance or biases. How comfortable.
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