Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme

The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme (mahJ) is located in the Marais in an old hôtel, or mansion, just up rue du Temple from our Paris Ward.

Entrance from rue du Temple

Courtyard of Museum

Hommage to Captain Dreyfus

There were two special exhibits I wanted to see. The first was Jules Adler: Painter of the People. Adler was born in eastern France in 1865 and was a naturalist painter like Gustave Corbet. His first major work was "Transfusion of Goat's Blood." Look carefully at the goat on the table behind the patient.

Transfusion of Goat's Blood

It shows a famous doctor, who specialized in tuberculosis, administering an experimental treatment of transfusing goat's blood on a dying patient. The patient did not survive. 

Adler turned from this naturalist or realist style of painting to a more expressive style. He called the painting below of his home town a family portrait. It is painted from a window in the home where he is born looking down the street where he played growing up and shows his father in front of his shop talking to a neighbor.

Vieux Luxeuil

Photograph of Adler

He became known for his paintings of people living on the margins of society, including the poor, miserable and oppressed. He was called a  "painter of the humble." He was interested in the plight of the people.

The absinthe drinkers in the background of his painting "The Mother" reminded me of Cezanne's portrayal of absinthe drinkers. But Adler's painting of the scene depicts a working class ravaged by misery and alcoholism. The mother is distancing herself from the men, gripping her child firmly as if to tear away from the evil influence.

The Mother

Adler's painting "The Smoke" reminded me of Edouard Manet's painting "The Railway," which hung in my kitchen for many years.

The Smoke by Adler

The Railway by Manet

Adler captured everyday life in this picture of girls going to their first communion.

The First Communion. Paris Spring

He was too old to fight during World War I and he and his wife ran a cantine for needy artists and others. In 1917 he was sent to Verdun as an army artist to paint the war. After the war, he painted "The Armistice," inspired by a jubilant scene in front of the Opera at the end of the War.

L'Armistice

His last large scale painting was "Paris, View from Sacré Cœur," painted in 1936. It is a declaration of his love for Paris. The couple in the foreground is probably him and his wife. Adler deliberately left out the Eiffel Tower from the view.

The second exhibit at the museum was about Adolfo Kaminsky, a master forger during World War II and beyond.

His parents were Jews from the Ukraine and Georgia and left Paris for Argentina. Adolfo was born there in 1925. His parents decided to return to Paris in 1932.

He only attended school until the 8th grade. Then he had to go to work to help his poor family. He got a job as an apprentice dyer at a dry cleaner at age 15. He loved this job and immersed himself in the chemistry of it, learning how to dye clothing and also how to remove stains, such as ink spots.

Kaminsky Age 19

He was interned with his family at Drancy in 1943, but they were able to escape deportation because they were Argentinian and the Argentine Consul intervened on their behalf. But they needed to get false identity papers to survive in Paris. He met with the Resistance and when they found out his familiarity with chemicals and that he knew how to get out ink stains, they put him to work and he became their master forger. His daughter, who found out about her father's clandestine past late in his life, wrote a book about him about 10 years ago, "A life of a forger." He kept his forgery activities a secret from his family to protect them.

Kaminsky is in his mid 90s and still alive!

Kaminsky in 2019

During the war he was once given the job of forging papers for 300 children in 3 days. He had to produce 900 documents. He didn't dare fall asleep because he could produce 30 sets of papers in one hour so for every hour he slept, 30 children would die. He did pass out eventually but woke up and was able to complete all the documents in time. And he was still a teenager himself! The Germans were after the master forger but had no idea he was so young and he was never caught.

After the war he forged identity papers to help people secretly emigrate to Palestine before Israel was established. He continued to forge papers for 30 years for causes he deemed just, such as Algeria's National Liberation Front, opponents of Franco in Spain and those opposed to the dictators in Portugal, Greece, Chile and Haiti. He even forged papers for Vietnam draft dodgers in the U.S. But he refused to work for violent groups that emerged in Europe in the 1970s and retired from his life as a forger. He never asked for payment for his forgeries.

Luxembourg Fountain  1955

Child at a Fountain 1948

He discovered photography during WW II and made it his profession. His photography has been largely ignored because of his illegal activities and partly because of his clandestine life.

I also visited the permanent exhibit in the museum. Many interesting artifacts and paintings of Jewish life. I loved the 13th century gravestones from a cemetery in Paris.  

13th Century Gravestones

Menorah

All of the gravestones begin "This is the gravestone of" and end with "Who has gone to the Garden of Eden" and "may his/her soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life." Beautiful.

I loved the Chagall paintings, the first is from 1908 and the second from 1916. It was interesting to compare the change in the style. I think I like the 1908 one best--I love the fiddler on the roof.

Death 

The Lovers in Gray

As many times as I've lived in Paris, I am still finding there are so many places I haven't yet seen.  The mahJ was a great place to spend a rainy afternoon.