Memory and Ethnicity: Ethnic Museums in Israel and the Diaspora

Among the public spaces where ethnicity has become more visible are museums, together with heritage centres, art galleries, and the Internet. The aim of Memory and Ethnicity is to investigate how ethnicity is represented and narrated in such spaces. How have groups of Jews from such different backgrounds as Morocco, Egypt, India or the US elaborated their past legacies and traditions vis-à-vis a variety of national narratives and cultural or political ideologies? This volume describes the emergence of a new museological scene – that mirrors a multi-vocal Jewish and Israeli public sphere in which ethnicity has become central to a nation’s cultural imagination. By considering museums as “places of memory” where an ethnic/communal identity is displayed, Memory and Ethnicity analyses which memories are preserved, and which suppressed. This study sets out to enrich the understanding of Israeli and Jewish cultural history, and also to deepen the field of museum studies from little investigated perspectives.