Description of the attraction
The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center was opened in Moscow, on Obraztsova Street. The museum is located in a historic building designed by the architect Konstantin Melnikov - "Bakhmetyevsky garage". The building was built from 1925 to 1927. The museum was opened on May 18, 2011.
In the modern world, Jewish museums are an integral part of cultural life. This applies to most countries in the Old and New Worlds. There are Jewish museums in London and Berlin, New York and Paris, Munich and Amsterdam, Budapest and Warsaw, Vienna, Prague and many other cities. These museums have a very important function - they preserve and popularize the culture of European Jewry, which was almost completely destroyed in the first half of the twentieth century.
Sergey Ustinov became the organizer and founder of a private museum in Moscow. For Moscow, this event became very important, because there are many Jews living in the city. Sergei Ustinov set himself the task of creating not just a thematic collection reflecting the history and culture of Russian Jews, but also organizing a public educational center. Here you can get acquainted with the rich heritage left by the Jews of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Specialists can find previously unknown documents and photographs in it.
The collection of the museum includes a collection of exhibits that convey the atmosphere of life in a Jewish town. The modern museum continues the traditions of museums that existed from 1914 to the 30s. One of the areas of activity of the new museum is the presentation of the way of life, traditional for Jews, home life, the Jewish holiday calendar and significant events in people's lives: weddings, funerals, births of children.
The museum has a wide range of religious items. You can see decorations for Torah scrolls, parochets, Torah reading pointers and religious calendars. The museum has rare exhibits, such as a cabinet for storing Torah scrolls - Aaron Kodesh from the mid-19th century and a chair for the circumcision ceremony, a gate for the entrance to the pulpit, from which the Torah is read in the synagogue. A wedding chuppah (canopy) made of velvet and amulets that protect against evil spirits, gingerbread boards and Easter dishes are of great artistic and historical value.
The museum also has exhibitions dedicated to Jewish education and theater, the role of Jews in the political life of Russia. Reflected in the exposition and the Soviet period before the Great Patriotic War.
Conferences, debates, presentations and seminars are held in the museum's lecture hall, in which not only museum employees, but also well-known experts in the field of Jewish studies take part.
