JUDEO-ALSACIAN MUSEUM
28 aout 2023
The mannequins of the Museum
Loyalty to France is one of the main characteristics of Alsatian Judaism. After the Revolution, many Jews from Alsace pursued a military career.
France is the first country in the world to recognize equal rights thanks to the Declaration of Human Rights.
Before he turned 13, the future "bar-metzwe" went regularly to the Rabbi to learn to read Hebrew in a Torah scroll. He will have to retain the "néguenn", the cantilation fixed by tradition, from his "sédre", his section, aided by the movements of his master's hand, and submit to an examination of his knowledge...
The Jew and the Christian:
In Alsace the understanding between Jews and Christians was particularly good. The museum represents this good understanding by these two mannequins who discuss.
The man with the palm: a man, dressed in a cloak and a prayer shawl over his shoulders, holds the bouquet of Sukkot, the palm, the myrtle and the citron.
The jobs of the Jews were all hard jobs
that nobody wanted to do.
Here the mannequin represents the cattle dealer.
The maquisard: The image of the passive Jew in the face of oppression is wrong.
Most of the Jews involved in the resistance melt into a local non-Jewish group. Others, because persecuted as Jews, want to stand up as a Jew in the face of the enemy. This is the case with the “Jewish maquis” in the south-west of France, counting in their ranks a number of former Jewish Scouts from Alsace, already hardened in the “farm-schools”.