Jewish Worlds Illuminated: A Treasury of Hebrew Manuscripts from the JTS at the Grolier Club of New York
Online exhibition
This exhibition, presented by the Grolier Club, offers a compelling exploration of the visual and material culture of Jewish objects. It was curated by renowned scholars like David C. Kraemer, Director of the Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Sharon Liberman Mintz, Curator of Jewish Art at the Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and International Senior Specialist for Judaica, Books, Manuscripts & Textiles at Sotheby's, New York. Drawing on the remarkable collections of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library, the exhibition presents a wide range of works that reflect the intellectual, religious, and artistic life of Jewish communities across many centuries.
Visitors encounter important objects of Jewish written culture, including ketubbot, prayer books, biblical manuscripts, and scholarly works. These objects demonstrate how written texts were not only vehicles for transmitting religious knowledge but also sites of artistic expression.
The exhibition also highlights the geographical diversity of Jewish life across the diaspora. The objects originate from regions including Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, revealing how Jewish scribes and artists absorbed local artistic influences while maintaining distinctive Jewish visual traditions.
Originally presented as an on-site exhibition until December 2025, it is now available online.As a launch of the exhibition, Emile Schrijver, professor of the History of the Jewish Book at the University of Amsterdam and director of the Joods Museum, Amsterdam, and Sharon Mintz gave a fascinating lecture . You can find the lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/live/2P8hqdDDQLQ
https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/jewish-worlds-illuminated/watch--tour-of-jewish-worlds
Unimaginable. The Void After the Great Synagogues at the Galicia Jewish Museum
Runs until 31 August 2026
The exhibition "Unimaginable: The Void After the Great Synagogues" at the Galicia Jewish Museum explores the memory of the great synagogues that once dominated many Polish cities. It focuses on the impressive Jewish houses of worship built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which served as important landmarks for local communities.
Through photographs and historical documents, visitors can imagine what these buildings looked like and the role they played in Jewish urban life. The exhibition brings together examples from numerous Polish cities, demonstrating how widespread this architectural legacy was.
The exhibition's central theme is the void left by the destruction of these synagogues during World War II. Many buildings were never rebuilt, leaving behind only fragments of memory, such as photographs, city plans, or memorial plaques.
By presenting these traces of the past, the exhibition encourages visitors to consider how an important part of Jewish cultural life disappeared from view. It also highlights the artistic and architectural richness of the synagogues that once stood at the heart of Jewish communities.
https://galiciajewishmuseum.org/en/wystawy/unimaginable-the-void-after-the-great-synagogues/
Please Continue... Conversations with Holocaust Witnesses at the Joods Cultureel Kwartier Amsterdam
Runs until 8 November 2026
The exhibition "Please Continue… Conversations with Holocaust Witnesses” presents the personal stories of people who survived the Holocaust and later chose to share their memories with younger generations. Through filmed interviews, visitors encounter individuals who describe their lives before the war, the persecution they experienced, and the difficult process of rebuilding their lives afterward. Rather than focusing on objects or traditional displays, the exhibition centers on the voices and faces of the witnesses themselves.
A distinctive feature of the exhibition is the use of digital technology that allows visitors to interact with the recorded testimonies. By selecting questions on a screen, visitors can hear survivors respond with different parts of their stories, creating the impression of a direct conversation. This format encourages active engagement and helps visitors connect emotionally with the people behind the historical events.
The exhibition also highlights the importance of preserving these memories for the future, especially as the generation of Holocaust survivors grows smaller. By presenting these testimonies in an accessible and interactive way, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect on remembrance, responsibility, and the lasting impact of the Holocaust on individuals and communities.
https://jck.nl/en/agenda/please-continue-conversations-with-holocaust-witnesses
The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries at the Yeshiva University Museum New York
Online exhibition
The Virtual Tour of “The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries” allows viewers to explore the exhibition online and learn about the lasting influence of the medieval Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides. The digital exhibition presents a selection of rare manuscripts, early printed books, and historical objects connected with his life and intellectual legacy.
Through the virtual format, visitors can examine important artifacts closely and follow the development of Maimonides’ ideas across different centuries and cultural environments. Some highlights include manuscripts connected with his own writings and beautifully decorated medieval books that show how scholars preserved and transmitted his works.
The exhibition also introduces objects that reflect the historical world in which Maimonides lived, including materials related to Jewish communities of the Mediterranean region. By combining historical texts with visual and artistic materials, the online exhibition reveals how his teachings influenced religious thought, philosophy, and scholarship long after his lifetime.
Overall, the virtual tour provides an accessible way for audiences to explore the intellectual heritage of one of the most important figures in Jewish history and to understand how his works continued to shape Jewish learning for many generations.
The Power of Words. On Jewish Languages at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Warsaw
Core exhibition
The exhibition “The Power of Words. On Jewish Languages” at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw explores the many languages that Jewish communities developed and used in different parts of the world. It shows how speech and writing became essential tools for maintaining culture and identity among Jews living in many countries. The display introduces visitors to several linguistic traditions, including Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic, each reflecting the history of particular communities.
The exhibition explains how these languages combined elements from surrounding societies while preserving distinctive Jewish cultural expressions.
Another important theme of the exhibition is the special role of Hebrew, which functioned not only as a language of sacred texts but also as a cultural reference point for Jewish communities around the world. The displays also highlight the relationship between language and creativity, showing how artists and writers have used Hebrew letters and other scripts as visual and cultural symbols.
By presenting different languages together, the exhibition demonstrates how linguistic diversity shaped Jewish life across centuries. It invites visitors to reflect on how words preserve memory, transmit knowledge, and connect communities separated by geography and time.
https://polin.pl/en/event/power-words-jewish-languages-exhibition
Core Exhibition at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Warsaw
Core exhibition
The Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews presents a broad narrative of Jewish life in the lands of Poland across many centuries. The exhibition is organized as a sequence of galleries that guide visitors through different historical periods, beginning with the earliest Jewish presence in the region and continuing to contemporary times.
Rather than focusing only on major historical events, the exhibition also explores everyday experiences, religious traditions, cultural creativity, and social life within Jewish communities. Visitors encounter historical documents, artistic works, personal stories, and multimedia installations that help recreate the atmosphere of different eras.
One striking feature is the reconstruction of the colorful interior of a wooden synagogue, which allows visitors to imagine the appearance of Jewish religious architecture in earlier centuries.
The exhibition also addresses the devastating impact of the Second World War and the destruction of much of the Jewish population in Poland. The final section reflects on the postwar period and the gradual re-emergence of Jewish cultural life in the country.
Through historical objects, digital media, and narrative displays, the exhibition invites visitors to consider the long and complex relationship between Jewish communities and the wider society in Poland. In this way, it presents Jewish history not as an isolated story but as an integral part of the broader history of the region.
A Voice from the Desert at the Israel Museum Jerusalem
Runs until 15 September 2026
The exhibition “A Voice from the Desert” at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem focuses on one of the most remarkable ancient biblical manuscripts ever discovered—the Great Isaiah Scroll. This long parchment manuscript was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran and dates back more than two thousand years. It preserves the entire text of the Book of Isaiah and offers a rare opportunity to see how biblical writings were copied in antiquity. Because of the fragility of the manuscript, it is usually displayed only in small sections, so presenting it almost completely is a rare event.
Alongside the scroll itself, the exhibition explains how the manuscript was created, preserved, and eventually discovered in the desert caves near the Dead Sea in the twentieth century. Interactive displays and visual explanations help visitors understand the materials used by ancient scribes and the techniques that allowed the text to survive for so many centuries.
The exhibition also places the manuscript in its broader historical and religious context, showing why the Book of Isaiah has played such an important role in Jewish tradition and in later religious thought.
The Girl who Wrote at the Israel Museum Jerusalem
Runs until 30 October 2026
In February 1767, on the very day she turned fourteen, a Roman Jewish girl named Luna Ambron finished copying out the entire Book of Esther by hand, along with an accompanying sheet of Purim blessings that stretched to nearly four meters of parchment. Her achievement sat in obscurity for over two centuries before the Israel Museum acquired it in 2021 — and it turned out to be something extraordinary: one of just three surviving Hebrew liturgical manuscripts anywhere known to carry a woman's signature as scribe.
What makes Luna's work especially compelling is the small note she tucked beneath the text — written in a cramped, personal hand, blending scripture with her own voice to record her age, her name, and her private hopes for the future. This exhibition uses that note as a starting point to ask bigger questions: how was a teenage girl permitted, encouraged, and trained to produce a sacred text usually reserved for men? The answer lies partly in Jewish law, which never explicitly barred women from writing Esther scrolls, and partly in the Ambrons themselves — a wealthy, well-connected family of bankers and art dealers who led one of Rome's most prominent synagogues for generations.
Visitors will also meet the small handful of other women known to have scribed Hebrew texts across the centuries, from Paola bat Avraham Anav in thirteenth-century Rome to Stellina bat Menachem, who signed her own Esther scroll in Venice in 1564, and Camilla de Rossi, whose Purim blessings sheet dates to 1770 — just three years after Luna's. Ketubbot, silver Torah fittings, and family papers round out the picture, together sketching a community in which teaching girls to read and write Hebrew was seen as essential — not incidental — to keeping Jewish life intact under constant pressure from Christian conversion efforts nearby.
Curated by Anna Nizza-Caplan (please find her brilliant article here: https://www.academia.edu/168351432/The_Girl_Who_Wrote_Luna_Ambrons_Esther_Scroll).
Women of the Wiener Werkstätte at the Jewish Museum New York
Runs until 15 November 2026
The exhibition “Women of the Wiener Werkstätte” highlights the often overlooked role of women artists and designers who participated in the famous Viennese design collective active in the early twentieth century. It presents a wide range of objects created by women who worked in different fields of decorative arts. Through these works, visitors can see how female designers contributed to the development of modern design and artistic innovation in Vienna.
Many of the objects on display demonstrate the distinctive visual language of the Wiener Werkstätte, where everyday items were designed with careful attention to form, color, and material. The exhibition also shows how women played key roles not only as creators but also as supporters and collaborators within the artistic community.
By bringing together works from numerous designers, the exhibition reveals how women helped shape the aesthetic direction of modern applied arts. It encourages visitors to reconsider the history of design and to recognize the important contributions of artists whose achievements were long overshadowed by their male contemporaries.
https://thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/women-of-the-wiener-werkstatte/
Our Medieval City! The First Jewish Community in Vienna at the Jewish Museum Vienna
Core exhibition
Our Medieval City! The First Jewish Community in Vienna takes visitors back to the beginnings of Jewish life in medieval Vienna, revealing how one of the city's earliest Jewish communities lived, worked, and contributed to urban society. Through archaeological discoveries, rare historical objects, and original stone inscriptions, the exhibition tells the story of a vibrant community that flourished for centuries before its tragic destruction in 1421. Visitors can explore the remains of the medieval synagogue, learn about everyday life, religious traditions, education, and trade, and discover how Jewish and Christian communities interacted within the city. The exhibition also highlights the remarkable archaeological excavations carried out beneath Judenplatz, which brought this forgotten chapter of Vienna's history back to light. Multimedia displays and carefully preserved artifacts help transform historical evidence into a compelling narrative. Rather than focusing only on historical events, the exhibition presents the people behind them—their beliefs, professions, families, and cultural achievements. It offers a deeper understanding of medieval Jewish heritage and its lasting influence on Vienna's history.
https://www.jmw.at/exhibition/our_medieval_city_the_first_jewish_community_in_vienna
Unimaginable. The Void After the Great Synagogues at the Galicia Jewish Museum and Baroque Synagogues in the Czech Lands at the Jewish Museum Prague
Touring exhibition, Prague
Runs until 31 August 2026, Krakow
These exhibitions together present a remarkable journey through the architectural and cultural heritage of Jewish communities in Central Europe. Although they focus on different historical periods, both exhibitions demonstrate how synagogues served not only as places of worship but also as the spiritual, educational, and social centers of Jewish life. Visitors discover the rich diversity of architectural styles, from elegant Baroque interiors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the grand monumental synagogues built during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through historical photographs, architectural documentation, and carefully selected visual materials, the exhibitions reveal the artistic achievements of local architects who shaped these unique buildings. They also highlight the close connection between synagogue architecture and the traditions of the communities that created and maintained them. At the same time, both exhibitions remind visitors of the devastating losses suffered during the Holocaust and the destruction of countless Jewish monuments that once formed an integral part of Europe's cultural landscape. Many of these remarkable buildings no longer exist, making the surviving documentation especially valuable.