Amplifying Jewish Tales within the American South

Once we consider the Jewish-American diaspora, our thoughts often doesn’t consider the South. That’s God’s nation — extra particularly, Jesus Christ’s. However that doesn’t imply there aren’t 1000’s of Jews residing within the area. Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem and Adam Carlin, co-directors of the Greensboro Modern Jewish Museum in North Carolina, are connecting with this neighborhood via social observe.

The museum, which doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar headquarters, started in 2019 when Gugenheim Kedem was invited to turn into an artist in residence on the College of North Carolina, Greensboro. She labored inside the small Jewish Research Program, which linked her with college students within the non secular research division, none of whom have been Jewish themselves. 

Nonetheless, Gugenheim Kedem began assembly different Jews within the school city, which boasts a inhabitants of about 3,000 — a tiny neighborhood in comparison with the tens of millions unfold throughout New York Metropolis, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco — and determined that she wished to launch a museum that celebrated this tradition for her residency mission. 

“Jewish museums get established in very massive, Jewish metropolises,” Kedem informed me over Zoom. “They’d by no means, beneath regular circumstances, set up a Jewish museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.”

With the maiden identify of Gugenheim, however no relationship to the Guggenheims, she has lengthy been fascinated with museums and who holds their energy, who will get to curate collections, and whose voices are included. She linked with Carlin, who was then the director of the UNCG Greensboro Undertaking Area, and likewise a former classmate of hers at Portland State College’s MFA in Artwork and Social Observe, to launch the Greensboro Modern Jewish Museum and amplify Jewish tales within the predominantly Christian neighborhood.

For the primary exhibition, 36 + 2, the museum launched a immediate: “Share a couple of private object imbued with significance to you as a Jew.” The gadgets they acquired, from 36 individuals and the 2 co-directors, included Judaica-like mezuzahs and menorahs, issues historically related to the faith, but additionally extra abstractly-related gadgets, like Tupperware and a soccer buying and selling card. These objects associated to the Jewish expertise in additional oblique, however equally vital methods. Meals, ready by a Jewish neighborhood in Virginia, was carried to a breast most cancers survivor whereas she healed; and the buying and selling card was given to a shy new pupil in elementary faculty, and the proprietor thought the generosity represented tikkun olam, a tenant that asks Jews to restore and enhance the world.

After the exhibition ended, GCJM selected to make the museum decentralized, with residents doubling because the stewards of the everlasting assortment. This manner, nobody needed to completely half with sentimental gadgets. Gugenheim Kedem made stickers that the individuals might publicly show of their home windows, signifying their involvement within the GCJM. These decals felt dangerous in a city the place each different house has an indication praising Jesus on their entrance garden. Although nobody skilled any anti-Semitic backlash, publicly asserting their identification felt like a danger. 

“I feel the intentions of the areas we’re creating and the communities that we’re creating is in response to not feeling protected on a regular basis,” Carlin stated. “Utilizing social observe to have interaction the Jewish neighborhood is a device to struggle these issues. It’s ingrained in our tasks, and doing it within the South is especially essential.”

The truth that 36 individuals joined the primary exhibition was fortuitous — the quantity corresponds to the Hebrew letter, “Chai,” which can also be represented by the quantity 18. All divisions of 18 are seen as fortunate in Jewish tradition. It was an indication to maintain the museum mission operating previous Gugenheim Kedem’s residency.

The pandemic moved GCJM on-line, however they continued to host digital occasions like a radical seder for Passover and a Kosher baking lesson for Shavuot, a Spring harvest pageant. When Greensboro reopened, they constructed a Sukkah on the Elsewhere Museum, an artist-run house that coincidentally was run by one other Jewish particular person. The neighborhood was increasing.

GCJM and Elsewhere teamed as much as run their subsequent massive mission, a 10-day Social Observe Institute for Jewish artists throughout the South. The inaugural cohort introduced in 4 artists from North Carolina, Arkansas, Washington, DC, and Florida, who stuffed their days with lectures, workshops, fieldwork, and artwork manufacturing. The artists took this coaching again into their communities. 

Although their tasks are nonetheless in improvement, we get a glimpse of what’s to come back via Zoe Wampler’s collaborative efficiency Divrei Torah Time Machine (2023–ongoing). Wampler, a motion artist, producer, and educator, invitations individuals to revisit the Torah portion from their bar or bat mitzvah by prompting them with questions that get them to replicate on their coming-of-age journey.

Gugenheim Kedem and Carlin acquired a whole lot of curiosity on this residency from individuals outdoors of the South — together with myself, as I’m additionally a social observe artist along with a author — however strictly saved the individuals regional.

The Social Observe Institute will quickly wrap its first yr of engagement and is getting ready to publish a name for its second cohort. As well as, the GCJM is planning public programming round a brand new public sculpture, “That Girl Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots,” (2023) North Carolina’s first monument to ladies and kids of the Holocaust, which was unveiled in April. The artist, Victoria Carlin Milstein, included bronze casts of Greensboro resident and Holocaust survivor Shelly Weiner into the sculpture. 

Even with these packages, the way forward for the GCJM is precarious. With no everlasting house, they’re depending on partnerships with locations just like the Elsewhere Museum to maintain their presence recognized in Greensboro. They’re additionally preventing for funding in a city that’s consistently handed over for bigger cities.

“I feel that the cultural affect of the Southern Jewish [artist] neighborhood shouldn’t be highlighted in the identical approach as artists from Brooklyn, LA, or San Francisco,” Gugenheim Kedem stated. 

The GCJM may very well be used as a template to highlight different areas the place Jewish populations are current, however their tales are unknown. Think about a Jewish museum in rural Oklahoma, Nebraska, or Utah. Greensboro could also be shedding a lightweight on Jewish arts and tradition within the South, however we’re, in reality, in every single place.