Jewish Heritage Travel Program Launched At The Museum Of Jewish Heritage

 The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust has launched a brand-new travel program devoted to exploring Jewish cultural destinations around the world.

From the Baltic States to Northern Spain, Cuba, and Poland, Jewish Heritage Travel journeys will be unforgettable learning experiences led by experts and accompanied by renowned scholars who will shed light on Jewish life throughout the ages. In addition to private tours and lectures by some of today’s top scholars, many of the trips include opportunities to meet with Jewish community leaders abroad.

Dr. David G. Marwell, Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, said, “We’re so pleased to be able to team up with Dr. Aryeh Maidenbaum, a world-class expert on educational travel. We invite travelers to experience the richness and complexity of Jewish history and heritage in exciting locales outside of the Museum’s walls.”    

Dr. Maidenbaum said, “The Museum of Jewish Heritage is a wonderful institution devoted to learning about and celebrating Jewish culture and continuity. I look forward to working with the Museum on this travel program, which I hope will complement the themes and offerings of the Museum in a very meaningful way.”

For more information and to register for one or more of the trips, contact Jewish Heritage Travel at 825.256.0197 or info@jhtravel.org, or visit http://jhtravel.org.

About the Trips

The program will launch on August 30, 2015 with Jewish Jewels of the Baltic: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Highlights of the trip will include the picturesque city of Vilnius, the countryside of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the ancient capital Trakai, and the charming city of Riga, followed by the architectural wonders of Tallin. Professor Sid Leiman, an expert on Lithuanian Jewry, will accompany the trip, which will run through September 10, 2015

From October 28, 2015 through November 8, 2015, travelers can explore Mysticism, Music & Poetry: The Jews of Northern Spain with accompanying scholar Professor Ray Scheindlin, an expert on the Jews of Spain. Travelers will admire Barcelona, the homeland of the Spanish Kabbalah. From there they will travel to Girona, home to one of the most important Kabbalistic schools in Europe. Other highlights include stops in Tarazona to view the recently discovered remnants of the Jewish community there. The group will also stop in Madrid and El Escorial where participants will delve into medieval Jewish history, and Toledo, where they will have the opportunity to tour the city’s surviving synagogues.

Travelers will discover A Marriage of Different Cultures when they arrive in Havana, Cuba on February 9, 2016. Once there, visitors will be treated to presentations by local scholars and experts, and an overnight excursion to Cienfuegos and Santa Clara. Along with the chance to meet local community leaders, travelers will have the opportunity to explore Havana and the outlying provinces and experience the unique flavor of Jewish life in Cuba. The trip will run through February 16, 2016.

The inaugural travel season will conclude with a look at Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: The Jews of Poland, which will take place from May 2 through May 12, 2016. Accompanied by the Museum’s Director, Dr. David G. Marwell, travelers will begin in Warsaw where they will tour the new Museum of the History of the Polish Jews and other sites of interest. The next stop on the journey will be the scenic old town of Wroclaw (Breslau), which will be followed by a trip through Poland’s countryside and villages including a stop in Lodz. Visitors will continue on to the dynamic cultural capital of Krakow. From Krakow, they will travel to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and to the recently expanded Auschwitz Jewish Center, for a private tour with the director.

All trips include rich Jewish content, deluxe accommodations, comfortable land transportation, some meals, and all lectures, presentations, guided tours, and site entrance fees.

About the Trip Leader

Dr. Aryeh Maidenbaum earned his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is also a graduate of the Jung Institute of Zurich. He brings with him more than 25 years of experience organizing and leading educational travel programs, including trips focusing on Jewish culture and history and psychology. Supported by a highly skilled and dedicated staff, and drawing from the Museum’s resources, Aryeh’s travel leadership skills and enthusiasm will enhance the Museum’s unique and fascinating journeys.

About the Museum of Jewish Heritage

The Museum’s exhibitions educate people of all ages and backgrounds about the rich tapestry of Jewish life over the past century—before, during, and after the Holocaust.  Current special exhibitions include Against the Odds: American Jews and the Rescue of Europe’s Refugees, 1933-1941, on view through February 15, 2015 and A Town Known as Auschwitz: The Life and Death of a Jewish Community. It is also home to the award-winning Keeping History Center, an interactive visitor experience, and Andy Goldsworthy’s memorial Garden of Stones. The Museum offers visitors a vibrant public program schedule in its Edmond J. Safra Hall and receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Exhibit On US Jews Who Helped Refugees From Nazis

In this undated photo provided by the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Carl Laemmle is shown with his children, Rosabelle and Carl Jr. Laemmle was the founder of Universal Pictures and used his connections and resources to help bring Jews over from Europe after the rise of the Nazis. An exhibition opening at the museum on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 called “Against All Odds: American Jews and the Rescue of Europe’s Refugees, 1933-1941,” documents efforts by Laemmle and others to get Jews out of Nazi-era Europe despite strict immigration quotas in the U.S. (AP Photo/Museum of Jewish Heritage/George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

 (AP) - An exhibition opens Tuesday at a museum in Lower Manhattan about efforts by American Jews to bring refugees to the U.S. from Europe during the Nazi era.
The exhibition, "Against All Odds: American Jews and the Rescue of Europe's Refugees, 1933-41" will be on view for a year at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, located on Battery Place.
The museum says the show is one of the first major exhibits about the subject, including images, rare documents, first-person accounts and interactive presentations.
Strict quotas on U.S. visas made it difficult for refugees to get into the U.S. during the Nazi era. A debate has raged for decades about whether the U.S. Jewish community did enough to get Jews out, and whether the U.S. government policies that impeded their immigration were the result of anti-Semitism among U.S. officials, ignorance about the Jews' likely fate if they were not rescued, or, as some historians have argued, a matter of misguided wartime priorities.
But more than 200,000 Jews did leave Europe for the U.S. during the Nazi era, and the exhibit tells the story of how some of them made it out thanks to the ingenuity and resources of the American Jewish community.
Stories include that of William B. Thalhimer Sr., a Richmond, Va., department store owner who turned an old tobacco plantation into a working farm in Hyde Park, Va., where 36 Jewish immigrants lived and worked. Also featured in the exhibit is Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle, who came to the U.S. from Laupheim, Germany, and helped bring many individuals from the Laupheim area to the U.S. The exhibit includes Laemmle's 1937 letter to Secretary of State Cordell Hull expressing sympathy for German Jews.
The show includes a 1941 letter from Albert Einstein to Eleanor Roosevelt as well, in which Einstein condemned the State Department's "wall of bureaucratic measures alleged to be necessary to protect America against subversive, dangerous elements." Einstein helped found an organization that later became the International Rescue Committee.
Some of the refugee sponsors were well-connected individuals of means who were able to guarantee that those they brought to the U.S. would be provided for and not become public burdens. They helped find jobs for them and set up charities to pay for their medical care and other needs.
But there are also stories of average folks who stepped in to help. In one case, a European Jewish composer named Erich Zeisl wrote a letter to someone he found in the New York phone book with a similar name. They were not related, but the New Yorker, Morris Zeisel, a plumber, wrote back immediately and got the paperwork necessary to bring the composer and his wife over.
"We hope that 'Against the Odds' dispels misconceptions about American Jewish passivity during the Nazi period," Anita Kassof, the museum's deputy director, said in a press release. "It's true that American immigration law restricted the number of people admitted to the U.S. But within those limits, it was sometimes possible for dedicated and persistent people to bring refugees to safety." Some of the rescuers managed to save hundreds of people, but "each started out by bringing an individual or a single family to America," she added.
Not all of those who sought to get Jews out of Europe succeeded. "Against the Odds" also describes some of the failed efforts and those left behind.
The show also includes artifacts like photos, diaries, seed packets from the Virginia farm, and a beaded bracelet that refugee Lotte Henlein made as a Girl Scout in North Dakota. Henlein's uncle, Herman Stern, lived in North Dakota and encouraged all young immigrants to join the Scouts as a way of learning American values.
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If You Go:
AGAINST ALL ODDS: http://www.mjhnyc.org/againsttheodds . Exhibition through May 21, 2014 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, 36 Battery Place, Manhattan. Adults, $12; seniors, $10; students, $7; children 12 and under free. Closed Saturdays. Open Sunday-Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

© 2013 The Associated Press