“Jew in the Box” exhibition – controversy 2013.

Hey there, folks! Ah, back home, been on holiday for a week – celebrated Passover in the pastoral area of Brittany, France. I visited Omaha Beach, saw some really amazing places, was a lot of fun. The drive back was rather exhausting – 11 hours total! I ran across this article as I was catching up with news, and I found myself a bit torn. Let me explain what happened: We all know what happened to the Jews in the Second World War. At least I hope so. If you happen to be one of those rare individuals who does not know, here’s a quick explanation – 6 million Jews were systematically and routinely murdered, by Nazi Germany. This is called the Holocaust.

So, here we are now, nearly 70 years later, the Holocaust is a black mark on Germany’s history and is still considered one of the worst atrocities of history. The Holocaust, that terrible genocide (it wasn’t limited only to Jews, of course), is one of the defining attributes of the Jewish people – perhaps even the defining attribute of Jews to other peoples (yes, Jews are part of a people, not only a religion). In other words – to many people, Jewish history is limited to nearly purely the Holocaust. Talk about a sad connotation, huh?

The Jewish Museum of Berlin decided it wants to educate about Jews, in what is probably one of the most controversial exhibitions I’ve ever seen: put living Jews in glass boxes (voluntarily, of course), for two hours a day, so they may answer the questions of those who are curious. At the bottom of the glass casing is the question “Are there still Jews in Germany?”. When I talked with my mum about this, she thought it was a good idea an in-your-face, thinking out of the box, making people come face-to-face with Jews. This was met with a lot of criticism form the local Jewish community, and I honestly cannot blame them; living and breathing people, as exhibition pieces? Am I the only one who gets the zoo-vibe from this? I can already sense people saying “Oh, look, it’s a Jew, let’s try to feed him! Just make sure the peanuts are kosher – that’s what they call it, right?”

Don’t get me wrong – I understand the idea of a living example, but putting a Jew as a museum piece, that’s just going one step too far. Here’s an example to illustrate my point – if the same would be done to a black person, there would be a massive outrage. “He is put up, like he’s a slave again!” they would say. The same is true for any people – we are not museum pieces. We’re people, damn it! Portraying any people with a living museum piece, in my opinion, does them a great injustice by condensing a people and its history into one person, sitting inside a glass casing like some animal, for your entertainment.

To give the defenders of this exhibition credit, they do make a pretty compelling argument: when you’re a Jew in Europe, you inevitably will feel like you’ve become a display piece for someone to gawk at. While I’ve experienced that many times in Europe, I still strongly believe that enhancing this feeling of Jews being something else, something different and unusual whose history can be boiled down to the Holocaust and not eating pork, simply does more bad than good. Here are some pictures from the actual exhibition:

“Jew in a Box” exhibition

“Jew in a Box” exhibition

“Jew in a Box” exhibition

What do you think?