Chanukah has come and gone, and with it, the last major Jewish holiday for a little while.
This Chanukah was home to menorah lightings across the city, as usual, as well as one particularly notable Festival of Lights exhibit at Baltimore City Hall. Jews have long worked in Baltimore City politics and had a presence at City Hall, as they have at Charm City area colleges for hundreds of years.
Case in point: a Jan. 9, 1976, Baltimore Jewish Times article titled “Of Antique Judaica Stories and Styles” that tells the tale of an exhibit at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County that highlights common, uncommon, old and new menorahs, as well as Israeli art.
The “Symbols of Light and Visions of Peace” exhibit at the UMBC Library featured menorahs dating back to biblical times, as well as art created by Israeli children of both Jewish and Arab backgrounds.
The Judaica was donated by the Abramowitz and Siegman couples, whom writer Barbara Pash described as having an “encyclopedic knowledge on all aspects of Judaica.”
Irving Abramowitz told Pash about how Judaica was not “fashionable” in the 1950s and parts of the ‘60s, meaning that it was easy to acquire. This allowed for him and his wife to collect a sizable amount.
The exhibit included a clay oil lamp from 1500-1900 BCE, which predates Joshua. Aaron Siegman obtained this lamp on an archeological dig in Israel. There were also menorahs from the Middle Ages, as well as a copper menorah from 15th-century North Africa.
The exhibit at City Hall, like the one 50 years ago at UMBC, isn’t just about displaying Jewish items. As Samantha Frost, the multimedia designer in the Mayor’s Office of Cable and Communications, explained, exhibits like this are important for the Jewish community.
“The exhibition had two goals,” Frost said in a Baltimore Jewish Times interview. “The first was to offer Jewish Baltimoreans a familiar sense of holiday warmth and recognition. The second was to create an inviting, accessible entry point for visitors learning the traditions and story of Chanukah for the first time.”
Just like the Judaica, the paintings at UMBC Library in 1976 serve a greater purpose.
“Surrounding the Chanukah menorah display are paintings done by Israeli children and Arab children from the Occupied Territories,” wrote Pash. “The paintings were commissioned by the Israeli government…Mrs. Susan Fey, UMBC director of exhibitions, observed that the art work ‘shows the children’s own feelings of real brotherhood and hope for peace. A few of the paintings display the emotional disturbance caused by war, but most have an almost religious theme in the sense of ‘we shall overcome.’”
