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While riding in a taxi for many long hours, en route from Russia to his city of birth, Benjamin Zar dropped the bombshell: “When we get to Mashhad,” he told Sarah, the woman he recently got engaged to, “my mother will give you a pendant that you have to wear. Otherwise, our lives will be in danger.” That episode took place in the 1920’s. A few months earlier, Benjamin’s father, a fur trader from Mashhad, Iran whose name was Yaakov Zar, was hosted by the Jewish community in the Russian city of Mur (which can no longer be found on[�]

When the curation staff at ANU-The Museum of the Jewish People gave Shoshana Mandel, a textile conservator, the original robe and wig worn by Shloyme Mikhoels when he played the lead role in King Lear at the Moscow State Jewish Theater nearly 90 years ago – courtesy of the Israel Goor Theatre Archives and Museum in Jerusalem – she could hardly catch her breath. Until the age of 10, Mandel lived in the Moscow State Jewish Theater compound. She was the only child of parents who were theater employees and remembers Mikhoels primarily as “Uncle Mikhoels” – a short and hyperactive[�]

Ever since the old Beit Hatfutsot Museum was opened in 1978, the legendary spirits of its founders, Abba Kovner, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Dr. Meyer Weisgal and many others, have been hovering above its walls. All of them were men, may we be spared such a fate, all of them were of Ashkenazi origin, heaven forbid, and all of them were ardent followers of the old Jewish story. And what is the old Jewish story? The old permanent exhibition at the museum began with the Arch of Titus and the destruction of the Second Temple and ended after two thousand years[�]