An extensive Library of Congress exhibit scheduled to open in September will launch a series of events celebrating 350 years of American Jewish life. “From Haven to Home,” the lead-in to a yearlong celebration of American Jewish life called Celebrate 350: Jewish Life in America 1654-2004, will cover Jews’ immigration and integration in this country.
The Library of Congress hosted a three-day conference this week related to the celebration, featuring lectures on an array of Jewish historical subjects.
The exhibit to open in September will include hundreds of Jewish artifacts, including books, manuscripts, films and newsreels.
The complete series of events for the Celebrate 350 will run all year and span the nation, said Larry Rubin, executive director of the organization that is serving as the “hub and clearinghouse” for the celebrations. Throughout, parts of the Library of Congress exhibit will be ferried to Los Angeles, ! Cincinnati and New York for display.
Celebrate 350 traces the Jewish presence in America back to the settlement in New Amsterdam, now New York City, of two dozen Jews seeking to escape persecution in Brazil. The group established the nation’s first Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel, which will honor its founders with a special commemorative service.
Rather than waiting until September, Celebrate 350 has planned a number of preliminary events to augment and introduce the celebration to the public.
In one series of lectures this week, academics revisited the role of Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress in the World War II era, as well as the political activity of Jews during the Roosevelt administration and anti-Semitism in the 1940s.
Some have criticized Wise for not pressing Roosevelt strongly enough to intervene on behalf of Jews in Nazi Europe.
“You have to be proud of what you are,” Ofer Shiff of Ben Gurion University of th! e Negev said during that discussion. “If the price of being an America n is to be ashamed of who you are, then the price is too great, because you are alien again.”
Though much of the celebration will be retrospective, Celebrate 350 will not anchor the commemoration in the past.
“Our intention is not only to look back at 350 years of American Jewish history, but also to look forward,” Rubin said.
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