The Secret Lives of Interns: Week 2

With no rest for the weary the interns started right in on their second week at the JMM. After a whirlwind introduction, we got down to business.

This week was a week of firsts for me. First staff meeting (and I was late for it!); first time transferring phone calls; first time transcribing an interview; first collections committee meeting; and first time taking the Baltimore metro (which, I found, nearly doubles my traveling time). – Abby (exhibitions intern)

Development Intern Ilana is hard at work in
the boardroom with her supervisor Lee Hendleman!

This week at the Jewish Museum was great and really busy! I started working on different development initiatives and projects which will likely be carried throughout my internship. I am becoming involved with other departments and getting to know other people in the museum as well, since one of my projects is to interview the staff members who are working on various grants for either specific or non-specific projects. It's really nice to feel that I am getting things done and making a difference at the Museum. Being able to wallow in the Baltimore humidity is a great part of this experience as well! – Ilana

On Tuesday, archival intern Alison accompanied staff to Baltimore Hebrew University for the first round of an extensive project – labeling boxes! Sounds small, but it was an extremely important step in keeping a large collection (currently 300+ boxes!) organized and under control.

That’s a lot of boxes!

One thing I learned this week...well, I learned that not all "collections" are kept in the best condition (a.k.a. the BHU archives). They really were just kept in the basement. Since I got to actually see a little bit of the BHU archives, I'm excited to actually get to look in the boxes and see what kind of interesting stuff (hopefully interesting in a good way) is in there. – Alison

While Alison was toiling away in a basement in Park Heights, the rest of the interns were treated to the full staff monthly meetings. A lively discussion took place about “what the Museum does best,” giving the interns a chance to hear from the entire staff.

One of the biggest events of week two for the collections interns was the Staff Collections Committee meeting on Wednesday. At this meeting collections staff make decisions about all the new materials that have been offered as donations to the museum over the past 3 months. It’s always a time of questions and debate and all of our interns left with homework assignments - to research and report back on all the questions raised during the meeting.

Collections Manager (and professional Intern Wrangler)

Jobi Zink gives the interns what-for at the meeting.

It was a very informative meeting, and they allowed the interns to make suggestions and comments. A lot of time, effort, and research goes into these meetings. I learned that research is key in the selection process and am very excited to learn more at the next meeting. – Berkley

What was different from my expectations [of the meeting] would probably be that from a big collection, not everything was taken, to me it seemed like, sure, if there was one already in collection then it wasn’t necessary for accession but if it was something related to the items already being taken it should go with. That was just my opinion from a tidbit of the meeting. – Sean

The collections committee meeting was especially interesting because, along with the other interns, I got to see the thought process that goes behind accessioning material. The museum can't just accept anything and everything; the material has to be relevant to the museum's mission, and what is considered relevant is sometimes debatable. In particular, there was a City College yearbook from an Italian (non-Jewish) man who was married to a Jewish woman. On the one hand, there was bound to be Jewish students in the yearbook, but on the other, the book had belonged to a non-Jew. The pivotal question was: how important is the book's context? Does the fact of the book's owner matter more than its contents? It's not an easy question to answer, but it's one that has to be considered carefully in such a specialized museum. - Abby

Collections interns also got to start in on some of their main summer projects:

My favorite activity by far was putting new objects into other locations within the collections storage but also entering all the data into Past Perfect and getting that type of experience; another fun part was entering new objects to be accessioned, strenuous and time consuming with all the info that is necessary to fill it out but it offers me time to be creative. I'm a little slow with it all right now but more time with it and I'm going to be rockin' it! - Sean

Also, despite the fact this may sound weird...I actually enjoyed scanning photographs and updating the records for the LSS excavation. I liked looking at the photos and I also felt like I was doing something to help the museum and outside researchers. - Alison

This week at the Jewish Museum of Maryland I started my first project, cataloging a photo collection. It was a great learning experience and I was really interested in the whole process. – Berkley

And on a slightly different note, Shelby, one of our exhibition interns who is working long-distance for the month reports on life outside the museum!

Maggie and the cats: Play nice!

I've been in Florida for the past week, unpacking all the belongings I've acquired over the four years I've been in school in Baltimore and visiting relatives. We have a new addition to the family, a mutt named Maggie we adopted from a local rescue group. It's nice having a dog in the house again, and she's been a great excuse to take leisurely strolls along the beach in the evenings. While attempting to train her not to chase our cats and jump up on the furniture, I've also been trying my hand at cooking. I prepared a sweet couscous salad with almonds and dates (and discovered that I am allergic to dates in the process) and a chopped vegetable Israeli salad. – Shelby

Quick LSS Update

The LSS is now well into Phase II of its renovation/restoration. As you may have seen in earlier posts, our new crop of summer interns spent a good portion of their first week moving historic furnishings and the Golden Land exhibit in order to prepare for the demolition that began the following week. The wall separating the beit midrash from the GL exhibit has been removed, and several areas of historic interest have been uncovered, including large segments of stenciling from the Shomrei years. Demolition is about 90% complete at this point. Next week, we will begin installing sprinklers, waterproofing the basement, ripping out the foyer floor and stairs, and installing equipment and platforms in the attic.

I'll keep you updated (and take some pictures) as Phase II progresses!

Punk Judaism?

So, when I'm not managing the LSS's ren/rev project, I try to keep up with pop culture. Try being the operative word. Luckily, my friends are generally far cooler than I am, and they keep me abreast of what's going on in the world outside academia. Punk Judaism, for example. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of Matisyahu (admittedly, he's not punk, but bear with me a sec, I'm building up to a point). But did you know that he got his start on JDub, a non-profit, totally awesome Jewish record label? Did you know that JDub has an incredible variety of artists, from Girls in Trouble, who sing about Biblical women, to Socalled, whose first full-length album was a hip-hop seder, to Golem (my personal favorite), who blend Eastern European folk with punk, to Deleon, who sings Sephardic love songs?

So, what is all this punk Judaism about, anyway? Empowerment through subversion? That’s the take of Patrick A, the lead singer of CAN!!CAN, a Jewish punk band from Atlanta. Although the word subvert may have negative connotations, Patrick certainly doesn’t mean it in that way. He wants to subvert the standard operating procedures of today’s young, Jewish adults. “To me, Judaism is about being countercultural. It’s about embracing who you are, what you’re capable of doing, and leading a life that’s greater than anything that anyone’s ever had. You have an amazing amount of diversity and faith and beliefs, and we believe that all good people […] are going to share a piece in the world to come. You compare that to our modern lives, where we’re taught to be good little consumers, racing to the next hollow, emotionless trend like these psychological Happy Meals […]. Human beings aren’t meant to live like cogs in a corporate system or slaves to materialism. We’re bright, shining images of God, with the power of the universe at our fingertips. There’s so much about the Jewish faith that we lose from the time that we’re Bar Mitzvahed to the time that we go into college, and it gets lost in this sea of boring Friday night services and dorky summer camps and JDate profiles. The Judaism that I’m embracing is the Judaism of the prophets, who had angelic and nightmarish visions of alternate universes […].” (Hear the rest of this episode of Punk Torah here.) He wants you to get excited about Judaism. He wants you to embrace who you really are. And he wants you to have fun doing it.

Want more information? Check out my friend’s blog entry on Jewish punk here. He’s done far more extensive research than I have. (Sidenote: I met Michael at a Golem show. Golem has been described as “[...] not your father’s klezmer band. Unless, of course, your father was Sid Vicious.” You can find Golem on JDub (linked above) or here.) You can also check out a recent NY Times article here.

Father's Day Promotion!

Sunday, June 21st is Father's Day, and the last day that Lloyd Street Synagogue will be open during the summer. Celebrate by bringing your dad to the JMM for free! Just ask the front desk for the Father's Day Promotion.

A Mystery Visitor in LSS

Yesterday, as I was giving a tour in Lloyd Street Synagogue to a group from Yeshivat Rambam, I was briefly interrupted by an uninvited guest - a bird had made its way into the synagogue! All the third graders started giggling as the bird flew across the women's balcony. When we later hosted a group from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in the afternoon, the bird was back, pecking at the top of one of our two chandeliers. Was there a tasty bug hidden up there perhaps? Being late in the day, a new issue dawned on me... How were we going to alarm the building? Thanks to our collection manager Jobi's logical thinking, I tried calling animal control but unfortunately, didn't get very far. I was redirected to the USDA-APHIS-Wildlife Services for Maryland, but they were closed for the evening. So the building was locked up and left. This morning, I received a call back from Wildlife Services, only to learn that we'd have to contact a private company. Oy. People have been working in the building all day, so I'm hoping the bird flew back out. We've talked to the alarm company, who will alert us if the motion sensors go off tonight. So we'll see if our bird buddy is gone or made itself a roost!

Once Upon a Time Photos: 6.05.09

The Baltimore Jewish Times publishes unidentified photographs from the collection of Jewish Museum of Maryland each week. Click here to see the most recent photo on their website. If you can identify anyone in these photos and more information about them, contact Jobi Zink, Senior Collections Manager and Registrar at 410.732.6400 x226 or jzink@jewishmuseummd.org.

Date(s) run in Baltimore Jewish Times: 6/5/09

PastPerfect Accession #: 1988.142.003

Status: Identified! Black and white photograph of (L-R) Mollie (Goldstein) Greenberg or Belle Goldsmith holding a Ner Israel Ladies Auxiliary Life Member certificate, Bryna Volosov Kitay or Rebitzen Tova Krasner, and Sadie Tanenbaum or Pearl Schindler, 1977.

Special thanks to Morton Schindler, Bernard A. Greenberg, Debra Friedland, Sema Scherr, Miriam Glazer, Bryna Kitay, Liora Greenberg, and Margaret Brilliant

Once Upon a Time Photos: 5.29.09

The Baltimore Jewish Times publishes unidentified photographs from the collection of Jewish Museum of Maryland each week. Click here to see the most recent photo on their website. If you can identify anyone in these photos and more information about them, contact Jobi Zink, Senior Collections Manager and Registrar at 410.732.6400 x226 or jzink@jewishmuseummd.org.

Date(s) run in Baltimore Jewish Times: 5/29/09

PastPerfect Accession #: 1988.001.004

Status: Unidentified. 1912.