exhibitions/ce

THE IMMORTAL AL JOLSON
Al Jolson was known as the world's greatest entertainer....He was a master showman who performed for adoring crowds for more than fifty years.
His performances on stage were magical; His private life was complex and tormented.

The Museum of Family History honors one of the most gifted performers ever to grace the American stage. His contributions to American culture were immense; his cumulative work has left an indelible mark in the annals of music lore.

In this exhibition, you can read (and hear) about the fascinating life of the one and only Al Jolson, from the time he immigrated with his mother and siblings to America in 1894, through his tumultuous childhood and adolescent years. You can trace his career in show business from start to end, learning not only about his professional life, but his personal life as well....

Maurice Schwartz and the yiddish art theatre
Maurice Schwartz was not only one of the world's foremost Yiddish actors, he was also the founder and leader of the Yiddish Art Theatre of New York. Under his leadership, the talented theater troupe performed in many high quality Yiddish productions, always striving to maintain Schwartz's high artistic standards.
The only known biography of Schwartz is being presented here in a serialized form (with permission of the Estate of its dedicated author, the late Martin Boris), exclusively for visitors to the Museum of Family History. You will also find photos of scenes from various Schwartz productions, a listing of his troupe's entire repertoire, and photos of many of those who acted in his troupe as well as those who worked behind the scenes.

DAVID PINSKI, YIDDISH PLAYWRIGHT
David Pinski was a Yiddish playwright, novelist and editor. Born in Mohilev, Russia (now in Belarus), his plays were probably performed in English more than any other Yiddish dramatist. Though he was born in Mohilev, he was raised in Vitebsk. Most of Pinski's life was spent in New York though he moved to the new state of Israel in 1949.

In this exhibition, you can learn about Pinski's life, from his youth to his family to his life as a playwright and avid Zionist. You can even hear audio tributes by his grandson, as well as an early interview done for an Israeli radio station.

This exhibition is the second to be displayed under the banner of the "Great Artists Series," which is meant to honor those Jews who have made significant contributions to the world by the scope and quality of their work.

KADISON, BULOFF & THE VILNA TROUPE
Luba Kadison, a native of Kovno born in 1907, was a prominent Yiddish actress who performed in Yiddish theatres all over the world.

Hear about the professional lives of Luba Kadison and her husband Joseph Buloff, and the time they spent with the Vilna Troupe, excerpted from an interview conducted by Martin Boris with Luba Kadison in 1998.

Joseph Buloff: An Appreciation
“He doesn’t have to act,” wrote Maurice Schwartz, seeing him perform for the first time. “His special twists and turns move the audience so that they automatically break out in laughter. Buloff was a born clown. For the rest of his life he could merely play Joseph Buloff.” And so he did, over the next sixty years, as well as hundreds of characters on the Yiddish and English-language stages, a longevity unmatched by few actors—and never less than a rave review.

THE HABIMA IN NEW YORK
In 1926, the highly regarded Habima Players of Moscow went on a grand tour of many cities in Europe and the United States, performing their repertoire of five plays--including "The Dybbuk" by S. Ansky. After their touring was over, the troupe immigrated to Palestine, eventually becoming the national theatre of Israel.

GRINE FELDER: A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY
It must have been quite pastoral back in July 1938 when Isaac Bashevis Singer first glimpsed the bungalow colony grounds after a long, tedious drive from Manhattan. He might have stood at the entrance off the narrow serpentine road, beneath a jade-green canopy of tall, resin-scented cedars. Ahead of him lay a flowing, even more verdant landscape rising sharply into a series of tree-studded hills.,,

MODJACOT MARIONETTE THEATRE
As varied as Yiddish stage fare was in the Twenties, there was yet another form of theatre on Jewish Broadway that drew a select and appreciative audience to a tiny makeshift playhouse ensconced in a narrow four-story, red-brick walkup on 12th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues. Many would trudge up to the top loft and view what noted stage designer Boris Aronson labeled the finest theatre he'd ever seen. The acting troupe went by the slightly exotic name of Modjacot Marionette Theatre, and was, by self-description, the only Jewish puppet theatre in America.

LIFE AND DEATH OF A YIDDISH ART THEATRE
A mere handful of Yiddish playhouses were scattered over lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx during the Twenties. It was an especially bountiful era, dominated by Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, Jacob Ben-Ami's Jewish Art Theatre, the Folksbiene, and a few repertory companies in Brooklyn, and the Bronx, struggling for existence so far from Second Avenue, the Yiddish Theatre's equivalent of Broadway...

AN AMERICAN KIBBUTZ: FROM ODESSA TO OREGON, UTOPIA IN BRIEF
"Our long wandering comes to an end and a new life begins for us," wrote a young Russian Jewish immigrant in 1882, about to start an agricultural commune. The foreign soil he would soon till, however, was not in Eretz Yisrael, but in the U.S.A., in Oregon, 250 miles south of Portland, near the present-day town of Glendale.

Castle Garden: The First Entry Point to America
Before Ellis Island served as the gateway for our immigrant ancestors to enter the United States, most of them entered a location once used as a fortress, situated at the tip of the island of Manhattan named Castle Garden.

Max Weber: Reflections of Jewish Memory in Modern American Art
Max Weber was one of the finest cubist and expressionist artists of the twentieth century. A native of Bialystok, Poland who was raised in an Orthodox home, he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1891. Though not considered primarily to be a religious artist, Weber was deeply affected by the plight of the Jews in his native Europe both before and during World War II. These works represent an important and thoughtful phase in his career.

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIOS OF EASTERN EUROPE
This exhibition was created in order to acquaint those interested in photography with its early history, technically as well as commercially. A brief history of photography will be presented, as will a discussion of various aspects of the photographic studio and family portrait. The exhibition will refer to, for the most part, the photographic studios that were once located within the former Russian Empire. Also, the lives and careers of two photographers are presented through a series of descriptive, pictorial displays and historical perspective.

LETTERS FROM SZCZUCZYN
This exhibition is comprised of a series of twenty insightful and impactful letters written by Zev Kayman, a devoted father who remained in the town of Szczuczyn, Poland along with other family members, sent to his son Eliezer who had emigrated from Szczuczyn to a small rural town in southeast Australia in 1937.

WALK IN MY SHOES:
COLLECTED MEMORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST
There are many stories left to be told by survivors of the Holocaust, stories that must be told so that others may read and understand about what events transpired during these times, that our increased awareness of what occurred might prevent such a horrific event from ever happening again. Read accounts of a number of survivors from today's Hungary, Poland and Ukraine.

JEWISH IDEOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS: THE BETARIM
The Betar Zionist movement was founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia following a visit of Ze’ev Jabotinsky. By the end of that year, groups of Zionist youths from different schools were organized with the aim of putting an end to the image of “The Diasporal Jew.” Three years later in 1926, the first group immigrated to Israel.

THE LIFE OF NINA FINKELSTEIN
RECOLLECTIONS OF A FRIEND
Tales of life before and during World War II and survival in the Kovno Ghetto

A PHOTOGRAPHER'S LIFE
A FAMILY STORY TOLD
The story of the family of photographer Moisei Arenberg from Mariupol, Ukraine

WINDOWS IN TIME
A Summer's Journey to Europe and the Middle East
Taken in 1913 by Henry Nathanson

WORLD HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS
Photographs and descriptions of many of the memorials to the Holocaust that have been erected throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, Israel, and elsewhere in the world.

THE YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN OF OUR TOWNS
The hope of this exhibition is to present the faces of many of the young men and women who once lived in these towns before World War II and identify them. The first town is Lozdzieje (Lazdijai) in today's Lithuania.