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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2021
Are museums places about a community or for the community? This article addresses this question by bringing into conversation Jewish museums and Indigenous museum theory, with special attention paid to two major institutions: the Jewish Museum Berlin and the National Museum of the American Indian. The JMB’s exhibitions and the controversies surrounding them, I contend, allow us to see the limits of rhetorical sovereignty, namely the ability and right of a community to determine the narrative. The comparison between Indigenous and Jewish museal practices is grounded in the idea of multidirectional memory. Stories of origins in museums, foundational to a community’s self-understanding, are analyzed as expressions of rhetorical sovereignty. The last section expands the discussion to the public sphere by looking at the debates that led to the resignation of Peter Schäfer, the JMB’s former director, following a series of events that were construed as anti-Israeli and hence, so was the argument, anti-Jewish. These claims are based on two narrow conceptions: First, that of the source community that makes a claim for the museum. Second, on the equation of Jewishness with a pro-Israeli stance. Taken together, the presentation of origins and the public debate show the limits of rhetorical sovereignty by exposing the contested dynamics of community claims. Ultimately, I suggest, museums should be seen not only as a site for contestation about communal voice, but as a space for constituting the community.
Acknowledgments: Research for this project was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. A very early version was presented in the “Museums, Religion, and the Work of Reconciliation & Remembrance” conference at the Jewish Museum Berlin, organized by Monique Scheer and Pamela Klassen. For conversations on different aspects, I thank Dustin Atlas, Ron Cameron, Michal Friedlander, Justine Quijada, Larisa Reznik, Monique Scheer, Thomas Thiemeyer, Joseph Weiss, and Alexandra Zirkle. Special thanks to Pamela Klassen, who helped me think through multiple iterations of the argument, and to the anonymous CSSH reviewers for their helpful comments.
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58 Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums, 92.
59 George MacDonald, “Change and Challenge: Museums in the Information Society,” in Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven Levine, eds., Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1992), 177–79.
60 Kerstin Krupp, “Interview mit Peter Schäfer: Weg mit den Klischees,” Berliner Zeitung, 4 Sept. 2014.
61 On Schäfer, see the reflections on his work in Ra’anan S. Boustan et al., eds., Envisioning Judaism, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
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64 Feller, Yaniv, “Oy Tannenbaum, Oy Tannenbaum! The Role of a Christmas Tree in a Jewish Museum,” in Klassen, Pamela and Scheer, Monique, eds., The Public Work of Christmas: Difference and Belonging in Multicultural Societies (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), 144–45Google Scholar.
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66 Eldad Beck, “Ha-Museun Ha-Yehudi Ha-Anti-Israeli Be-Berlin (The Jewish Anti-Israeli Museum in Berlin),” Israel Hayom, 12 Sept. 2018, https://www.israelhayom.co.il/opinion/586213 (last accessed 11 May 2021). Claims that the museum is “anti-Jewish” predate Schäfer’s tenure. See Magid, “Why Peter Schäfer’s Resignation.”
67 According to Jannis Hagmann, the working paper could have been authored by the Israeli right-wing organization NGO Monitor, which “works in close coordination and cooperation with the Israeli government.” NGO Monitor and the Israeli Ministry for Strategic Affairs both denied involvement. See Jannis Hagmann, “Schwere Vorwürfe aus Israel,” Die Tageszeitung, 5 Dec. 2018, https://taz.de/Schreiben-liegt-der-taz-exklusiv-vor/!5553564/. On the targeting of non-Jewish institutions and scholars in Germany, see Itay Mashiach, “In Germany, a Witch Hunt Is Raging against Critics of Israel: Cultural Leaders Have Had Enough,” Haaretz.Com, 10 Dec. 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.highlight.magazine-in-germany-a-witch-hunt-rages-against-israel-critics-many-have-had-enough-1.9362662.
68 Jannis Hagmann, “Schwere Vorwürfe.”
69 Thomas Thiel, “Der Kurswechsel wird zum Kraftakt,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 Dec. 2019, https://www.faz.net/1.6538869 (accessed 9 Feb. 2020); cf. “Stellungnahme des jüdisch-muslimischen Gesprächskreises zu den Angriffen auf Dr. Yasemin Shooman und die Arbeit der Akademie-Programme in der FAZ vom 17.12.2019,” Jüdisches Museum Berlin, https://www.jmberlin.de/stellungnahme-vom-10-februar-2020 (accessed 12 Feb. 2020).
70 See the BDS’s website: https://bdsmovement.net/ (last accessed 1 Apr. 2020); cf. Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar, eds., Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018).
71 Michael Wuliger, “Besuch von den Mullahs: Warum sich das Jüdische Museum Berlin genauer anschauen sollte, wen es einlädt,” Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 Mar. 2019, https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/meinung/besuch-von-den-mullahs/ (accessed 9 Feb. 2020).
72 jmberlin, “#mustread Der Beschluss der Parlamentarier hilft im Kampf gegen Antisemitismus nicht weiter,” 6 June 2019, https://twitter.com/jmberlin/status/1136633875411755010; Jannis Hagmann, “Bundestagsbeschluss zu Israel-Boykott: 240 Akademiker gegen BDS-Votum,” Die Tageszeitung, 5 June 2019, https://taz.de/!5601030/.
73 Melissa Eddy, “Director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum Quits after Spat over B.D.S.,” New York Times, 14 June 2019, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/world/europe/berlin-jewish-museum-director-quits-bds.html.
74 Stefan Reinecke, “Nach Kritik am Jüdischen Museum Berlin: Das Vertrauen vespielt,” Die Tageszeitung, 15 June 2019, sec. Gesellschaft, https://taz.de/!5603080/.
75 Stier, “Torah and Taboo,” 512–13.
76 Baur, “‘We Are Here.’”
77 Deutsche Welle, “Jewish Museum Berlin Appoints Hetty Berg as New Director,” DW.COM, 27 Nov. 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/jewish-museum-berlin-appoints-hetty-berg-as-new-director/a-51437947.
78 Susannah Heschel, Shaul Magid, and Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Jewish Studies Scholars in Support of Prof. Peter Schäfer,” Google Docs, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScgaXEg1lNQICm7CromHUXLW1iJ_8TbMqHmKvrrZNIKHP2lzQ/viewform?ts=5d077b9d&edit_requested=true&fbclid=IwAR2Rl4XJn_p4tmuakM51WjbyrSaXJPgI3wQCfMf2diHM-7DSYgUZl-B9v50&usp=embed_facebook (accessed 9 Feb. 2020). See also Liane Feldman and Candida Moss, “Was the Director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum Really Pro-BDS?” Daily Beast, 23 June 2019, sec. World, https://www.thedailybeast.com/outrage-as-peter-schafer-director-of-berlins-jewish-museum-accused-of-bds-sympathies.
79 On competing narratives within the same community as a challenge to museums, see Lavine, Steven, “Audience, Ownership, and Authority: Designing Relations between Museums and Communities,” in Karp, Ivan, Kreamer, Christine Mullen, and Levine, Steven, eds., Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1992), 145 Google Scholar.
80 Singh, Museums, Heritage, Culture, 58–60, 72–74.
81 Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge; see also Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s comments in Melissa Eddy, “What and Whom Are Jewish Museums For?” New York Times, 9 July 2019, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/arts/design/jewish-museums-germany-berlin-europe.html.
82 “Museum Definition,” ICOM, https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ (accessed 12 Apr. 2020). Thomas Thiemeyer argues this definition is more accurately characterized as a vision, in “What Kinds of Museums for What Kinds of Societies?” ICOFOM Study Series 48, 2 (2020): 225–34.
83 Léontine Meijer-van Mensch, “Opening Keynote Discussion” (Museums, Religion, and the Work of Reconciliation and Remembrance, Berlin, 2019), https://www.jmberlin.de/en/discussion-program-museums-and-religion-between-commemoration-and-reparation (last accessed 11 May 2021). Meijer van-Mensch is a member of ICOM’s board and served as the JMB’s program director from 2017–2019.