October 15, 2012
A major new museum in Washington will tell the story of American Jews along with all other Americans. There are approximately 5 million Jewish Americans, making up a little under 2 percent of the U.S. population.
The proposed National Museum of the American People will tell the stories of Jewish Americans along with the stories of all of the other peoples that have come to this land and nation. It has support from major national American Jewish organizations including the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, American Jewish Committee, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and Russian American Jewish Experience.
These organizations are part of a coalition of more than 150 ethnic and minority organizations that are calling for a bipartisan Presidential commission after the election to study establishment of the museum.
"Our nation's capital is rich with museums and monuments which stand as testament to individuals and groups of varied races and ethnic backgrounds," said Richard T. Foltin, Director of National and Legislative Affairs for the American Jewish Committee. "A National Museum of the American People would celebrate not just the individual story of each of these groups, including American Jews, but also the cumulative story of all Americans—from the earliest, indigenous peoples to the many races, religions and ethnicities who continue to arrive at our shores in waves of immigration.
"Like most of our fellow Americans, Jews came to this country as immigrants from many distinct areas of the world—Germany, Russia, Latin America, Iran, India, Africa and more," he said. "Over time, we have become a part of the broader American Jewish community—and, as well, a part of the nation's diverse demographic landscape, coalescing with countless other minority groups, even as we have sought to maintain our sense of pride in our history and our particular traditions."
The museum will tell the story of the making of the American People from the first migrations to this land thousands of years ago, extending through waves of migration and immigration to the present. It will challenge visitors to reflect upon that history. Yet nowhere is there a museum devoted to telling this full story about the making of the American People.
For Jewish Americans, as well as all the others, the museum will tell who they were, where they came from, why they left their original land, how they got here, when they arrived, where they first settled, who was already here, what they encountered, where they moved after they arrived, how they became Americans, what they contributed and how they transformed the nation.
"HIAS strongly supports the establishment of the National Museum of the American People and believes it will depict the experience and contributions of the Jewish people to American life and America's rich history of diversity," said Mark Hetfield, Interim President and CEO of HIAS.
Founded in the early 1880s, HIAS, the global migration agency of the American Jewish community, is the oldest international migration and refugee resettlement agency in the world. In its 130 years of service, HIAS has assisted more than 4.5 million people to start new lives in freedom and security, including the vast majority of Jewish families in the U.S.
The coalition is not seeking federal funding to plan, build or operate the museum. A resolution in Congress calling for a presidential commission to study the museum has bipartisan support, including from Reps. Leonard Lance, R-NJ, co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus and Nita Lowey, D-NY, and David Cicilline, D-RI, members of the Jewish American Congressional delegation.
"The story of the making of the American People would be presented in a dramatic, interactive documentary format," said Sam Eskenazi, director of the Coalition for the National Museum of the American People. "It would be developed and vetted by teams of eminent scholars, including scholars of American Jewish history, and be told with force and clarity."
"The National Museum of the American People's permanent exhibition will leave an indelible impression of knowledge and understanding on visitors as they engage with and come to know the full story of the making of the American People and how the story of Jewish Americans fits into that story," he said.
The story could be told in the museum over four chapters:
Chapter 1 - The First Peoples Come: Prehistoric period-1607; Indian migration and settlement, early European explorers and first European settlement. Jews who were exiled from Spain are believed to be on the crews of some of these early explorers.
Chapter 2 - The Nation Takes Form: 1607-1820; the fate of Indians, Western European settlement, the African slave trade, the establishment of the nation, and the beginning of its expansion taking in new peoples. During this period there were small enclaves of Dutch Sephardic Jews along the Atlantic Coast in Newport, RI; New York City; Philadelphia; Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA. Some Jews played a role in financing the Revolutionary War and President George Washington wrote a letter to the Newport congregation that is a landmark in the annuals of religious tolerance.
Chapter 3 - The Great In-Gathering: 1820-1924; a century of immigration. The ancestors of most Americans came during this period. Jews came during this period in two major waves. The first was German Jews who came along with other Germans to this country starting in 1820 and building after 1840. Jews, who were spread in both the North and South, fought on both sides during the Civil War. From 1880 to 1924, millions of Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire, including parts of what are now Poland, came to America. Two million Jews from Eastern Europe had arrived by 1924.
Chapter 4 - And Still They Come: 1924-present; the ongoing story of American immigration. In the 1930's, the United States accepted approximately 100,000 Jewish refugees from Germany. Very few Jews were admitted to the United States during World War II and the Holocaust. After the war the United States admitted Jewish Holocaust survivors, and later others escaping harsh treatment in Arab lands. The last large wave of Jewish immigration to the United States came in the 1980s and 1990s from the Soviet Union. Many of the Jewish immigrants to the United States in recent years are from Israel.
States with the largest percentages of Jewish Americans as of a 2000 population survey are New York, 9%; New Jersey, 6%; and Massachusetts, Florida, Maryland and Nevada with about 4% and California with 3%.
"The National Museum of the American People will be at the intersection of every American group's memory and the history of our nation," Eskenazi said. "The theme of the museum is embodied by our nation's original national motto: E Pluribus Unum, from many we are one."
He said that "both U.S. neighbors, Canada and Mexico, have major national museums in their capitals telling the story of their peoples starting from the prehistoric period. They are the most visited museums in those nations. Our museum would be a destination for every school group visiting Washington and it would foster learning nationwide."