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Breaking Ground
A Jewish childrens museum, set to open in 2001,
will teach traditions to a broad range of visitors.
JULIE WIENER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York
A
t a time when Jewish
groups are exploring ways
of making Judaism relevant
to the younger generation,
construction is under way in the
Crown Heights section of Brooklyn
for a $19.5 million children's museum
designed to do just that.
More than 400 people — among
them New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani and a who's who of other
New York politicians — turned out
Sept. 8 for a festive groundbreaking of
the Jewish Children s Museum,
believed to be the first-ever institution
of its kind.
Scheduled to open in 2001, the
museum — which expects to see
120,000 visitors a year — will use
technology and hands-on activities
to reach Jewish history, values and
traditions to the elementary.school
set.
While there are already more than
400 children's museums in the United
States and 80 Jewish museums, this
will be the first large-scale institution
to blend the two missions.
Museum planners have hired the
architects firm Gwathmey Siegel and
Associates. The firm designed the
Guggenheim Museum addition and
the American Museum of the Moving
Image, both in New York City.
Douglas J. Gallagher, a firm that
did similar work for the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and
the Smithsonian Institute in
Washington D.C., is designing the
exhibits.
"In the beginning we thought of
this as a much smaller project, but
then we thought this has to be done
in a way that ensures Jewish and
non-Jewish people take this serious-
ly," said Rabbi Yerachmiel
Benjaminson, executive director of
Tzvios Hashem, the Lubavitch chil-
dren's organization responsible for
developing the museum.
Among the more than 42
exhibits planned for the new museum:
a larger-than-life Shabbat dinner table
that children can climb on, with com-
puter terminals that look like matzah
'
balls, and a Tu B'Shevat exhibit in
which children can climb trees and —
by pulling fruit — activate stories and
songs. The museum also will sponsor
arts and crafts workshops on Jewish
themes.
Although the museum is an off-
shoot of a Lubavitch-sponsored chil-
dren's organization and will be located
on Eastern Parkway, across the street
from the world headquarters of the
Lubavitch movement, leaders say they
are designing it to appeal to a broad
spectrum of visitors.
A museum consultant, Mindy
Duitz, interviewed staff at 20 Jewish
day schools, afternoon Hebrew schools
and camps and spoke with 80 individ-
uals from different sectors of the
Jewish community to find out what
features might make them likely — or
not likely — to attend.
She found concerns about prosely-
tizing, gender discrimination and con-
tents being "biased toward one per-
spective," concerns Benjaminson said
the museum will address.
"People should feel they're coming
to a learning experience, not one say-
ing you must do this or must do
that," he said. "It's giving an enjoyable
feeling of what Jewish traditions are all
about. We've tried to stay away from
anything controversial."
The museum also will welcome
non-Jewish visitors and, according to
its mission statement, provide "a set-
ting for non-Jewish children to gain a
positive perspective and awareness of
the Jewish heritage, fostering tolerance
and understanding."
Crown Heights is a working class
mixed-race neighborhood with a his-
tory of black-Jewish tensions that cul-
minated in riots eight years ago.
But museum leaders say the new
institution will benefit the entire com-
munity, and they are making efforts
not just to ensure smooth relations
but to present the museum as an
instrument for promoting tolerance
and understanding in the neighbor-
hood.
"Crown Heights will become a
model community where people will
become inspired because here is com-
munication and harmony,"
Benjaminson said at the groundbreak-
ing.
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