Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme
From Paris Hotels Reviews
Two blocks further west, at 71 Rue du Temple, stands the attractively restored Hotel de Saint-Aignan, now home to the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme. Opened in 1998, it’s mostly a combination of the collections of the now closed Musée d’Art Juif in Montmartre, of Isaac Strauss, conductor of the Paris Opera orchestra during the Second Empire, and the Dreyfus archives, a gift to the museum from Dreyfus’s grandchildren. The museum traces the culture, history and artistic endeavours mainly of the Jews in France, though there are also many artifacts from the rest of Europe and North Africa. The result is a very comprehensive collection, as educational as it is beautiful. Free audioguides in English are available and well worth picking up if you want to get the most out of the museum.
Highlights include a Gothic-style Hanukkah lamp, one of the very few French Jewish artifacts to survive from the period before the expulsion of the Jews from France in 1394; an Italian gilded circumcision chair from the seventeenth century; and a completely intact late nineteenth-century Austrian Sukkah, decorated with paintings of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives and built as a temporary dwelling for the celebration of the Harvest. Other artifacts include Moroccan wedding garments, highly decorated marriage contracts from eighteenth-century Modena and gorgeous, almost whimsical, spice containers.
Appropriately enough, one room is devoted to the notorious Dreyfus affair, documented with letters, photographs and press clippings; you can read Emile Zola’s famous letter "J’accuse…!" in which the novelist defends Dreyfus’s innocence, and the letters that Dreyfus sent to his wife from prison on Devil’s Island in which he talks of épouvantable ("terrible") suffering and loneliness.
There’s also a significant collection of paintings and sculpture by Jewish artists – Marc Chagall, Samuel Hirszenberg, Chaïm Soutine and Jacques Lipchitz – who came to live in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Holocaust is only briefly touched on, since it’s dealt with in depth by the Musee de la Shoah. The main reference is an installation by contemporary artist Christian Boltanski; one of the exterior walls of a small courtyard is covered with black-bordered death announcements printed with the names of the Jewish artisan who once lived in the building, a number of whom were deported.
Visitors' Information
- Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 11am-6pm, Sun 10am-6pm
- Admission Charges: €6.80
- Website: www.mahj.org
- Address: M° Rambuteau)
