This colloquium will focus on two periods during which Jews displayed their ritual objects in public. The first, beginning with the Parisian and London exhibits and concluding with the Viennese Jewish Museum’s opening in 1895, reflects a growing historical consciousness within the Jewish community that enabled a degree of separation from and an expanded view of the potential meanings of the materials presented. These initiatives were likely informed by Enlightenment ideas as interpreted by Jewish thinkers, including those of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, which helped transform Judaism from an all-encompassing way of life to one religion among many in European society, thereby opening a way for Jews to regard their ritual objects as appropriate material for self-representation in pluralistic societies.

The second period begins with the transmission of Jewish insights concerning Judaica collecting and display from Europe to the United States by Cyrus Adler, an observant Jew and Smithsonian Institution official. He established its department of “religious ceremonials,” acquired works for it, and used those works to assemble comparative-religion displays for expositions throughout the United States. Adler went on to help reorganize and lead the Jewish Theological Seminary where he created what became the seminary’s “Museum of Jewish Ceremonial and Historical Objects.” From its origin in 1904 through the late 1930s it resembled university teaching and research collections; but its activities, including thematic, ethnographic-style exhibitions and tours for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, indicate more public ambitions. The museum’s proximity to the seminary’s synagogue poses intriguing questions both about the uses of similar ritual objects in the two locations, one sacred, the other secular; and it challenges assumptions regarding secularization and sacralization in museum research.