A Smithsonian employee talks with Esther Safran Foer and Sarah Leavitt in the Encounters tent/ photo taken by Rachel Mauro
I’ve been covering the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on this blog since 2010, but usually I cover it slant. Most years, the festival highlights one or two foreign cultures, and I swoop in with the history of Jewish life in those nations.
But this year, the Smithsonian beat me to the punch! Of the two programs this year, one of them is entitled Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S. Both 2023 programs highlight American customs.
I decided to attend the festival on Sunday for a special event. Two members of the recently opened Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum: Board President Esther Safran Foer and Curator Sarah Leavitt were on hand to discuss the museum and Jewish life in DC generally.
On this blog, I chronicled touring CJM on opening weekend! I was generally familiar with a lot of facts: like how Jews largely began migrating to DC for jobs during the Civil War, but the first Jewish family arrived in 1790. The cornerstone of the museum is the first purpose-built synagogue, dedicated in 1876. (The community that worshipped there, Adas Israel, is still active in DC!) President Ulysses S. Grant attended the three-hour dedication and left a hefty donation (perhaps inspired to do so after issuing the short-lived General Order No. 11.)
Little did Grant know that the building would be physically moved three times (and in 2019 by using an iPad.) Now it is linked permanently to the modern CJM museum space on 3rd and F.
The museum, open from Wednesday-Sunday, features free admissions except for the special exhibit (currently honoring the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In 2024, it’ll be replaced by the history of the Jewish deli!) Beyond reporting on the past, CJM also strives to be a place where members can sit around an interactive seder table and debate the issues. The exhibit Connect, Reflect, Act centers in part around Jewish thought and action when it comes to such topics as abortion rights and immigration. They’re hoping the relational and conversational aspect will have visitors coming back to CJM regularly.
It was a small and somewhat transient audience at the Festival, but several members came to the mic to reminisce about the past or express surprise that Northern Virginia now has the largest population of Jews in the DMV area. (My home, Montgomery County in Maryland, is also up there, and more Jews are starting to move back into DC proper as well. The Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center is back in its purpose-built space, and the building is turning 100 in a few years!)
I asked about the paper archives (back in 2012 I was a summer intern at CJM’s previous iteration, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.) Current interns are now working on digitizing those documents. We also learned that in the fall, a Torah will be walked from Adas to the historic synagogue!
The Capital Jewish Museum showcases how Jewish history is commemorated. In fact, worldwide, many historic synagogues are now used as museums. Rachel B. Gross wrote about this reality in her book, Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival also works in that vein! Beyond discussions, they invited religious groups to showcase rituals revolving around food, music and more. CJM presented a functional sukkah, pictured below. The sukkah is a temporary dwelling space tied into the harvest holiday of Sukkot. You can also visit the Nouwruz (Persian new year) tent nearby, witness a Native Hawaiian hulu dance, visit with Mandala artisans and much more! (There’s also a daily Jewish Pickle Making Workshop, which the website always lists as full. :P)
The 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will be operating on the National Mall through Sunday, July 9. Their second program highlights the Ozarks, so allow me to complement that with a few Jewish organizations! Check out the synagogue Temple Israel and the book Jews of Springfield in the Ozarks. My own Jewish family isn’t from the Ozarks, but they settled in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri (where my mom was born) between the 1870s and 1920s. So we’re neighbors! 😛
For my past coverage of the intersection of Judaism and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, check out my “Annual Events” tab!
People gather and eat under this sukkah on the National Mall /photo taken by Rachel Mauro
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