Are America’s Museums Erasing Jews?

Jun 9, 2024 by Susan Rosenbluth

By Susan L. Rosenbluth

When Chana Zelig and her daughter recently visited the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington, D.C., the last thing she expected to discover was that the institute, renowned for celebrating “who we are” as Americans has included far fewer Jews than any other minority. Nowhere was this more glaring than in its new giant exhibition about entertainment.

Ms. Zelig said that while she, a renowned Judaic artist, is proud of her American identity, she left the Smithsonian with the impression that “America is not proud of us.”

In a piece by Ms. Zelig for the “Jew in the City” website, Ms. Zelig, who identifies as Orthodox, didn’t deny that the Smithsonian has always included Jewish history and culture in its exhibits, often featuring Jewish contributions to American culture, music, science, politics, and business. Its older collection contains numerous artifacts related to Jewish life and history in the United States. However, she said, she and her daughter couldn’t find similar references in the new collections.

“There was clearly a shift in priorities,” she wrote.

Where Are the Jews?

The most glaring example, she said, was the giant exhibition about entertainment, which she described as taking an entire floor “with bright lights, videos, and interactive displays.”

Upon entering, visitors are greeted by a video of comedians challenging stereotypes—Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and others. In vain, Ms. Zelig and her daughter kept waiting for the Jewish comedian to show up.

To their dismay, the same is true for the rest of the exhibition, which, she said, features contributions to American entertainment from every walk of life in the United States. However, although there is a lot about Hollywood, there is nothing about why or how Hollywood was invented—or by whom.

Excluded from the exhibition are notes about the Jewish composers, not even the ones responsible for the classic American songbook. There is no mention that the American film industry was founded and, for more than thirty years, operated by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. In fact, the studio system was the brainchild of a second generation of Jews.

Still Heavily Jewish

According to Neal Gabler, author of the lively and scholarly history of Hollywood, An Empire of Their Own, even today, although the business has been profoundly changed by television and the crush of new high-tech media, the entertainment industry behind the cameras, from its top leadership through the ranks of producers, marketers, talent agents, managers, and legal counsel is still “preponderantly Jewish.”

One look at the films made in Hollywood during its so-called “Golden Era” proves Mr. Gabler’s point that these entertainment industry leaders became super-American patriots.

All this is ignored by the curators of the exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Only Tevye and Sandy Koufax

According to Ms. Zelig, the one exception appears in a glass display case, next to Muhammed Ali’s robe: a mannequin wearing Tevye’s costume, a picture of Sandy Koufax, and “a sign describing how eventually Jews stopped hiding their identifies and started to openly identify themselves as Jewish.”

“Of all the areas of American life, Jews are over-represented in the world of entertainment. If we’re not included there, just imagine how we’re thought of elsewhere,” she said.

Ms. Zelig suggests that Jews “call this out and fight back.”

Change at AMPS

In fact, that seems to be what happened at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, which, at its 2021 founding, also left out any mention of specifically Jewish contributions to the industry.  Last month, AMPS added an exhibit on the Jewish founders of Hollywood.

Ms. Zelig’s reaction to the Smithsonian was to feel “hurt, angry, and desperately sad.”

“The whole point of the American History Museum is to embrace American history. The scarcity of references to Jewish life told me we are scarcely American,” she said.

She called on Jews to refuse to “sit back and allow ourselves to be erased.”

“There will be accountability only when we call this out and fight back,” she said.