By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent
What for the past year has been held inside the pages of a glossy book — and for the past 160 years held in the hearts and memories of families around the state — has now become three dimensional. On May 24, the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma opened its exhibit, “Family of Strangers: The First Century of Jewish Life in Washington, 1840-1940.” Though an exhibit on the state’s Jewish history had been in the planning stage for some time, when last year’s book, Family of Strangers by Molly Cone, Howard Droker and Jacqueline Williams, was published, the museum decided to use that history as the basis of their exhibition.
“This is a very special story,“said Redmond Barnett, the museum’s head of exhibits. “We decided early on there was a confluence with Family of Strangers.”
Williams actually helped to co-curate the direction of the installation. The Washington State Jewish Historical Society, which co-sponsored publication of the book, also assisted in creating the exhibit. Many of the stories also came from the Jewish archives at the University of Washington.
Yet what makes the museum’s “Family of Strangers” shine is the collection of artifacts. Because this is a temporary exhibit, the museum does not own any of the pieces. Therefore, it was up to the curators to find them on their own. They did a thorough job. Dozens of artifacts, ranging from clothing to ritual items to furniture, some more than 300 years old, fill the space.
Most were lent by area families, and some had been carried over from the countries of each family’s origin and passed down through the generations. Both Barnett and Doris Stiefel, president of WSJHS, said the families had a lot of anxiety about letting go of their heirlooms, but “we simply couldn’t have done it without them,” said Barnett.
He added that while everything they put in display, most from before the 20th century, is quite sophisticated, “it’s not intrinsically valuable, perhaps, but sentimentally valuable,” he said. “There are pieces here you just don’t normally see.”
One of the first artifacts makes it clear that though the bulk of Washington’s Jewish residents come from Seattle, this is really a statewide project. Two tablets from Tacoma’s old Talmud Torah Congregation display nine of the 10 commandments. The bottom of one tablet broke off but standing at eye level, according to Barnett, they “symbolize permanence, the ancient view of Jewish life.”
What separates a Washington history from an exhibit in any other state is the large population of Sephardic Jews. Sephardic tradition and life — whether it be heirlooms or rejection by their Ashkenazic brethren at a UW fraternity in the early 20th century — is well represented here.
Items of note include a charity book from the Bikur Holim synagogue in Turkey, which was used to raise money for the congregation by “selling” aliyot, and a ceremonial robe that was worn by the sister of longtime Seattle developer Sam Israel. No museum can tell every story, however, and Barnett told of how he learned that Israel was an avid photographer, and would spend two hours to get the lighting right to create a perfect shot.
Photos and plenty of captions give the exhibit much more breadth, and spread the stories to places like Ellensburg, Spokane and Walla Walla.
Anti-Semitism also had its place in Washington History, and Barnett said that though the exhibit does not attempt to explain it, the phenomenon is discussed.
“There were manifestations from time to time,” he said. “Anti-Semitism was there — we don’t hide it. We couldn’t and shouldn’t hide it.”
The exhibit finishes in 1940 with a postcard from a traveler to Vienna, talking about the horrible conditions and sadness over there. Because American Jewry changed during and after World War II, and the coming together of people post-Holocaust, “that’s another history being written,” Barnett said.
If you go:
“Family of Strangers” runs through Dec. 12 at the Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma. Contact the museum at 253-272-9747 or 888-238-4373 for hours and admission prices, or visit www.washingtonhistory.org.