Jewish museum to open soon amid rising anti-Semitism

The Executive Director of the first Jewish museum in Louisiana said the museum’s opening in New Orleans this year was due to the recent 60 percent surge in anti-Semitic incidents—the largest single increase on record.

On Jan. 15, “The Museum” was shown for the Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival at the Manship Theater to observe, examine, and ponder one of Israel's most important cultural institutions, the Israel Museum.

Following the film was a brief presentation from speaker Kenneth Hoffman, the Executive Director of the soon-to-be Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans opening this fall or “maybe even late summer.”

“For the first time, a majority of Americans surveys are concerned about violence against American Jews [and] two years ago, there were more hate groups monitored in the United States than ever before,” Hoffman said.

Due to this constant, the museum will be used as a tool to encourage “understanding and appreciation for Identity, diversity, and acceptance.”

He spoke of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting—the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in United States history, 10 anti-Semitic incidents that took place during the eight days of Hanukkah and the several targeted murders that have made the nearly 60 percent of 2018 hate crimes in the U.S. to have targeted Jews and Jewish institutions.

In the statements from online surveys asking if there is a need for a Jewish museum in the community, people responded that there is—hoping that the museum will “bridge divides that linger between some groups in the south” and that it is necessary to “find more ways to attract non-Jews to learn lessons of universal tolerance and acceptance.”

The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience’s floor plan emphasized the purpose of educating with a rooms dedicated to a classroom and a gallery for Jewish artifacts. 

Hoffman’s favorite response was from Deborah Lamensdorf-Jacobs from Mississippi who she, like many, said she “didn’t even know there were Jews in the South,” yet the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 12 anti-Semitic incidents in Louisiana in 2018, a rise that is four times the amount documented two years prior.

In addition, Baton Rouge acknowledged that it hasn’t been committing its data since 2015, even though anti-Semitic crimes occurred, Aaron Ahlquist, ADL’s southern regional director, said. Is not a surprise that southerners aren’t aware of Jewish southern history if they aren’t made aware of anti-Jewish crime.

“To me, [not submitting data] shows that anti-Semitism is not being taken seriously,” he said.

While anti-Semitism is lower in southern states like Louisiana that are known to have a low Jewish population compared to states like New York who have more than a 10 percent Jewish population, local Jewish hate crimes are enough to concern representatives and provide reason to increase security.

During a press conference at the New Orleans’ Jewish Community Center that was held on Jan. 8 to discuss how increasing anti-Semitism should be addressed by officials, Arnie Fielkow, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans called anti-Semitism and security “the most relevant topics in the Jewish community.”

Jewish community centers and synagogues have amped up security precautions since the dozens of bomb threats that occurred at Jewish centers across the country a few years ago. In response, New Orleans’ Touro Synagogue hired a front door armed security guard. A year later in 2017, a bomb threat caused the evacuation of the New Orleans Jewish Community Center.

Security measures were amped following the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings of several churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed 290 and injured 500. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

In 2018, there was anti-Semitic graffiti put on a synagogue in Mandeville that included the words “Synagogue of Satan” and numbers described as common white supremacist code. It was reported that Mandeville Police Chief Gerald Sticker said that the perpetrators may have been kids “being stupid.”

ADL reported last year that an abandoned building was vandalized was swastika graffiti and a Star of David in New Orleans and a Jewish middle school student in Lafayette was told she should "go back to the ovens" when she said she was cold.

More recently in Baton Rouge, there have been incidents of vandalism to Jewish cemeteries and insensitive language used by school children, The Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge’s Executive Director, Ellen Sager, said. Whether these incidents are done by children or not, they represent a dangerous escalation in fear and a justification for more incidents to occur.

The sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents included a significant increase in incidences in schools and college campuses.

“There are problems in the next generation—not just the old folks that are set in their ways,” Hoffman said about why educating through the museum and other Jewish educational initiatives are so vital.

The museum is going to be a great educational institution for students and teachers by becoming a gathering place for people who want to have conversations about what it’s like to grow up as a minority or as someone who is a little bit different, something the Jewish southerner is all too familiar with, he said.

His sister, Julie Hoffman, who co-chairs the Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival directs a Holocaust education initiative with film for students every year “because you have to continually teach these lessons for history,” she said.

A week ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz on Jan. 27, The Pew Research Center published a poll revealing that half of Americans aren’t aware that six million Jews died in the holocaust.

The lack of Jewish education not only has sparked concern to open the MSJE, but Steven Watson, CEO and President of the WWII Museum said is a reason there has been a local expansion of holocaust educational initiatives.

Opening soon is what he describes would be the museum’s “capstone experience” exploring the Holocaust in depth.

Until now, funding for educational initiatives had been abundant, but had not been prioritized considering the less than one percentage of Jewish Louisianans, Hoffman said. It was only through the Jewish community’s concerns that the museum’s existence came to be.

Watson also spoke of new offerings of lectures, symposia, film screenings and distance learning programs that highlight recent research and the personal accounts of the Holocaust—a subject that was limited to Hoffman’s speeches when he was employed there and brief pop-up series, he said.

By the end of this year, Jewish education will be abundant with new initiatives as MSJE’s 4,000+ unique piece artifact collection inspires others to teach and welcome diversity.