Celebrating Israel@65

On Sunday, June 9th, we participated in The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington's Israel@65 Festival at Union Market. More than 10,000 people, young and old, celebrated Israel's 65th

At our booth:
- Children created Israel birthday cards.
- An exhibition, Ties That Bind, told the story of Washington's role in the establishing the Jewish State.
- We handed out 600 fans as well as posters about Washington's celebration of Israel's independence.

View our photo album of the event!

Longtime JHSGW member Paul Pascal led a tour of the history of Union Terminal Market and former sites of Jewish merchants. Check out the pictures! We plan to offer this tour again soon, so keep an eye out.

If you attended the tour, please comment here or email to tell what you thought! If a friend was on the tour, please share this request.

Another Successful Jewish American Heritage Month

We've wrapped up another successful Jewish American Heritage Month, again showing our role as the source for community history!

You may have seen Arthur Welsh, the first American Jewish aviator, featured in the "Flashbacks" comic in the Sunday Washington Post. Our efforts led to this feature and the Society was mentioned in the final strip! You can now view the entire six-part series.

Executive Director Laura Apelbaum and board member Diane Wattenberg were featured in The Federation's Jewish Food Experience blog -- read the post about the winning National Spelling Bee word: knaidel.

We partnered again this year with the National Archives on a very special program featuring Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissman Klein.

We were also featured in Moment Magazine (download article) and we were out in the community a great deal:

   - Exhibition, Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City, was on display at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

   - Led 8 walking tours:
         - Washington Hebrew Congregation’s 6th grade, EntryPointDC’s young professionals group, and a public tour of Downtown DC
        - Arlington National Cemetery for the public, Women of Temple Rodef Shalom, and a Jewish school from North Carolina
        - Old Town Alexandria for the Adas Israel Congregation Sisterhood and Jewish Federations of North America staff

   - Presented 5 talks on topics about local Jewish heritage for:
        - OASIS at Montgomery Mall
        - U.S. Customs and Border Protection
        - EntryPointDC’s Shavuot Study Night
        - Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
        - Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington's annual meeting (related blog post)

Touring Historic Jewish Washington with Jewish Professionals

David displays a picture of Washington
Hebrew Congregation when it used to reside
at Greater New Hope Baptist Church

One of the Historical Society’s most popular events is tours of downtown Jewish Washington. Open to the public in the fall and spring, staff members are also on hand for private events. This morning, Interpretive Programs Manager David McKenzie and I met with a group of 17 Jewish communal professionals for a tour organized by The Jewish Federations of North America.

We started at the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum, formerly the home of Adas Israel Congregation and the first synagogue in the Washington area, to discuss the migration of Jewish groups into the capital and the literal migration of this building from 6th and G to 3rd and G streets in 1969. Outside, we braved the humidity to walk around 7th Street, once a neighborhood with a sizeable Jewish minority in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We also saw the sites of former synagogues-turned-churches as well as the revitalized Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. Perhaps the most quirky, if not momentous historical artifact was when David showed us an iron rung for tying up horses on the side of the road, one of the few still left standing in the city.

David also talked about plans in the works to move the historic 1876 Adas Israel synagogue yet again, this time to 3rd and F streets, and answered a few questions for a Ha’aretz reporter. For more information on setting up walking tours with the Society in Washington or Alexandria, click here.

Looking for summer interns

Want to gain valuable museum/public history experience while learning about D.C.-area Jewish history and contributing to a small organization?

JHSGW is looking for some interns for this summer. Read about the experiences of our former interns Stacey, Sam, and Shelly. (Note: Your name does not need to begin with "S" to intern here!)

Interns work in a variety of activities, including (but not limited to):
1. Archives/collections management
2. Research
3. Education/Programs
4. Outreach/Marketing/Membership
5. Publications
6. Website/Exhibitions

Since we have a small staff, there's a good chance you will be dabbling in all of the above fields during the course of your internship!

Interested? To apply, please send the internship application, along with your resume, a cover letter (no more than one page) detailing your interest in this internship and how it fits your goals, and a writing sample to: David McKenzie, Interpretive Programs Manager (dmckenzie@jhsgw.org) by April 1.

The writing sample can be whatever you would like. Some have sent academic papers. Others have sent exhibition texts, archival finding aids, or other materials they've composed for their classes, internships, or jobs. Just as long as it gives us the chance to see how you write, it's fine with us.

The internship is unpaid. Number of hours per week is flexible; schedule will be during normal business hours (9-5 Monday-Thursday). Schedule must be consistent from week to week.

Any questions? Contact David McKenzie at dmckenzie@jhsgw.org or (202) 789-0900.

Australians Visit the Synagogue

Today I had the privilege of showing the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum to a group from Australia! Thirty students from Notre Dame University in Freemantle, Australia, are here in Washington for three weeks, studying American politics and D.C. history at the Catholic University of America. Their professor, Leslie Woodcock Tentler from Catholic University, brought them to Washington's oldest synagogue after they toured other parts of the neighborhood.

I showed them the building's unique history--and how it fits into the history of this neighborhood, the Jewish community, and the city writ large. The picture shows students examining what the synagogue looked like just after its move in 1969.

We love to have classes--from kindergarten to college, from our city or from another hemisphere--come by our building and learn about Washington's Jewish history. At the university level, it's perfect for a D.C. history, urban history, or American Jewish history class.

Want to bring your group by? Click here for more information, or feel free to contact me!

Alexandria Walking Tour

This past Sunday I led 17 people around Old Town Alexandria. Here's a picture of me pointing out the home of Henry Strauss, Alexandria's first Jewish mayor (1891-1897). We also visited the sites of former synagogues and Jewish businesses--including two containing markers of their Jewish owners.

This is the fourth time I've led the tour since we developed it last year, and it continues to be a hit! Stay tuned for when we offer it in the fall.

Special VIP Guests on Arlington National Cemetery Walking Tour

Yesterday I had the amazing experience of accompanying Ambassador and Mrs. Michael Oren on our walking tour of Jewish "sites" in Arlington National Cemetery. Volunteer guides Les Bergen and Ernie Marcus provided a terrific insider's tour.

The most touching moments were watching the Israeli Ambassador place stones atop the headstones of one of Hadassah's first two nurses in Palestine in 1913-- Rae Landy and on the grave of Justice Arthur Goldberg. The Ambassador, a history professor himself, gave a wonderfully inspiring talk at the grave of Orde Wingate-- the British officer who was the father of the Israeli IDF teaching the nascent Jewish army how to fight. Orgate was killed along with other Brits and Americans when their plane was downed in the Burma theater during WWII.

It was a day filled with JHSGW programming -- uber-volunteer Marc Livingston led a walking tour of downtown DC, David McKenzie led an exhibit tour of Jewish Washington now on display at the Historical Society of Washington, and Maryann and Al Friedman hosted a salon for members to view their incredible collection of Hudson River School paintings.

A Busy Fall of Programs

As usual, we had a Fall full of programs! Luckily, the weather held out for most—although some brave souls endured the rain to learn about local Jewish history.

The past few weeks, we’ve had some large groups of students take walking tours of downtown Washington.

On the cold, rainy morning of October 18, our new volunteer Sheryl and I led a group of 52 kids, many of their parents, and Rabbi Joui Hessel from Washington Hebrew Congregation, and on a sunny—but no less cold—Wednesday morning last week, our Archivist/Curator Wendy, Administrator Joel, new volunteer Laura, and I led 80 tenth graders from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.

If you haven’t been on one yet, we start our downtown tours at the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum, originally the Adas Israel synagogue, and proceed to visit the second home of Adas Israel (today Sixth and I Historic Synagogue), former home of Congregation Ohev Sholom (today Chinese Community Church), and the former home of Washington Hebrew Congregation (today Greater New Hope Baptist Church). Along the way, we talk about what life was like for the Jews who lived, worked, and worshipped in this neighborhood in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

But our walking tours don’t just cover downtown Washington.

On October 25, I had the privilege of leading a tour through Old Town Alexandria on a beautiful fall day. This was only the second we’d led this program, but, judging by the 40 people who came out, we’ll be doing it again! This tour, which we developed to coincide with our Jewish Washington exhibition at the Lyceum in the spring, highlights the sites of formerly Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and two former synagogues.

The same day as the Alexandria walking tour, I also led a program called “Synagogue Story” for a group of second graders from Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation. The 19 kids in this phenomenal group learned about our historic 1876 synagogue, then made their own models of it to use as tzedakah (charity) boxes!

And to top it all off, our new volunteers Matt and Laura gave a tour of our exhibition Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community to the new 30s-40s group at Adas Israel Congregation, and our longtime volunteer Mark gave a tour of our exhibition Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln’s City to a group from Beth El Hebrew Congregation and Temple Rodef Shalom.

As you can see, we’ve had a busy—but enjoyable—fall at JHSGW. Make sure you check out our programs page. We hope to see you at one of our programs soon!