ETHEL MERMAN'S

Jewish Luminaries

Headed by a Detroit-area native,
new museum unveils the top 18.

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A rendering of the new National Museum of American Jewish History

Philadelphia (Jewish Exponent/JTA)

I

saac Bashevis Singer didn't care
much for the 1983 Barbra Streisand-
starring film adaptation of his short
story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy." The late
Nobel Prize-winning author couldn't pic-
ture a serious Talmud student breaking
into song.
Many Jewish moviegoers, however,
loved the Singer-Streisand pairing, which
is one reason why they are two of the first
18 luminaries chosen for the National
Museum of American Jewish History's
Only in America Gallery/Hall of Fame.
The list also includes others in the
arts and entertainment world (Irving
Berlin, Leonard Bernstein and Steven
Spielberg), as well as the cosmetics
magnate Estee Lauder and Baseball
Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax.
Scientists Albert Einstein and Jonas
Salk made the cut; so did Labor union
leader Rose Schneiderman and Louis
Brandeis, the first Jewish justice to
serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and a
leading Zionist.
Jewish communal giants also were rep-
resented, including four rabbis (Mordecai
Kaplan, Isaac Leeser, Menachem Mendel
Schneerson and Isaac Mayer Wise) and
pioneering activists Emma Lazarus and
Henrietta Szold. One Israeli prime min-
ister also made the list: Golda Meir, who
emigrated from Kiev to Milwaukee in
1906 and lived there for 15 years before
leaving for Palestine.
The fact that a good number of the
entries were born outside the United
States highlights the centrality of
the immigrant experience to Jewish
American identity, according to Michael

Rosenzweig, 57, museum president
and CEO. The gallery will be part of the
museum's core exhibition when it opens
on Independence Mall, right across from
the Liberty Bell, in 2010.
Over the summer, the museum invited
the public to vote online for 218 can-
didates; more than 209,000 votes were
cast from 56 countries. Rosenzweig, who
grew up in Oak Park and Southfield
and is a graduate of the University of
Michigan and Columbia Law School
(he taught at the U-M Law School from
1979-1987), noted that the top eight vote
getters made the list, but the museum
is not releasing the vote totals. Museum
curators made the final decisions.
"This was never intended to be a
popularity contest, said Rosenzweig,
whose family attended Adat Shalom
Synagogue in Detroit. "The 18 finalists
represent a consensus between the pub-
lic vote and the museum's historians
and curatorial staff."
The list of initial nominees drew
criticism from JTA columnist Edmon
Rodman, who noted the lack of any
candidates from the worlds of food, toy
making, invention and design.
Writing in the Forward, Rodman
argued that "it's the same old catego-
rized list, put together by experts who
may know their history, but who don't
really know how to measure who has
captured the popular imagination, its
taste and mind."
If one of your favorites is missing
from the list, don't give up hope. At some
point, according to Rosenzweig, the
museum will choose a different group
of 18 Jewish Americans to be featured in
the exhibit. r7

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