Taxidermy and Ancient Artifacts on Display at Brooklyn’s Living Torah Museum

In the ḥasidic enclave of Borough Park, Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch presides over Torah Animal World, part of his Living Torah Museum, which was named “Best Museum in New York” by the Village Voice. The exhibits, all of which are interactive, include displays created from stuffed animals and ancient artifacts with varying degrees of connection to the Bible. Jamie Manelis writes:

[Deutsch’s] interest in using taxidermy animals . . . began with his innate need to teach. On realizing the important roles specific animals played in the Torah, [he] wanted to create a multi-sensory approach to teach children about them. Opening a zoo in Borough Park would be complicated at best. He found a loophole. “We did the next best thing using taxidermy animals. We’ve never killed an animal—I don’t believe in killing animals [other than for food]. I do believe that if they’re already dead and available, let’s use them for education.”

Rabbi Deutsch balances his creative needs with philanthropic endeavors. On top of maintaining [the museum] he runs Oneg Shabbos, a food program for the hungry and homeless. The largest food pantry in Brooklyn, [it] helps feed over 1,100 families on a weekly basis, [r]egardless of . . . religious affiliation. . . . He also runs a burial program for people who can’t afford proper funerals. . . .

Most museums are cold, bright, and almost sterile due to the fragility of art, handled with delicate hands and admired in silence. The Living Torah Museum feels just the opposite. It’s like walking inside of your eccentric grandfather’s living room. Deutsch’s hands-on approach doesn’t only satisfy a historical curiosity; it forces a new connection to items lost in the vacuum of time. Cradling a perfume bottle excavated from King Tut’s tomb cultivates a new sense of understanding—something you could never experience by simply peering through a glass barrier. “Perfume bottle.” Rabbi Deutsch inspects a brown withered object and shakes it. “You hear that? Dried perfume! Here, hold it,” he says, shoving it into my hands.

Read more at Observer

More about: Arts & Culture, Brooklyn, Hebrew Bible, Jewish education, Jewish museums

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society