Named after its benefactors, Helen and Harold Derfner, the Derfner Judaica Museum has continued the preservation of artistic and historical items for more than 40 years.
Located within the Hebrew Home at RiverSpring Living, the museum currently has two exhibitions — "Tradition and Remembrance: Treasures of the Derfner Judaica Museum" and "Artfully Arranged: Floral Works from the Collection."
The permanent exhibit, Tradition and Remembrance, displayed hundreds of Jewish ritual objects – Hanukkah lamps, menorahs, torahs, plates and mezuzahs – including objects from the Holocaust. The exhibition boasts artworks by Jewish painters and visual artists, Abraham Rattner and Zygmunt Menkes, the latter of whom was born in Poland and lived in France before he settled in Riverdale in 1936.
The museum has a lone artifact from the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol synagogue which opened in 1910 – a Decalogue lion, also known as the Lion of Judah. Associated with the Ten Commandments, the lion represents holiness, royalty, protection and power in Jewish culture.
The museum also preserved a spice container from the Holocaust, found buried under a synagogue in Oslo, Norway after the country was invaded by the Nazi regime.
“Each item in this exhibition tells its own unique story,” Susan Chevlowe said, chief curator and museum director at Derfner, has been with the museum since 2008.. “There is so much information attached to each item — and stories are told through these objects.”
During the early 1900s, more than one million Jewish people immigrated to New York, many of them impoverished and fleeing Jewish persecution from several countries throughout Eastern Europe.
At the time, the Beth Hamedrash Hagodol synagogue in Harlem was open 24 hours a day and would frequently see elderly men and women in need of shelter sleeping on their benches. The synagogue began running a full-scale shelter in 1915 and that’s when the idea of the Hebrew Home for the Aged was born. The Hebrew Home then became an official charitable organization in 1917. The institution moved to 5901 Palisades Ave. in 1951, hence the name The Hebrew Home at Riverdale.
The museum was established three decades after the institution relocated. In 1982, Ralph Baum and his wife Leuba, both Riverdale residents, donated their collection of Jewish ceremonial art to the Hebrew Home.
Ralph Baum, who passed away two years after donating more than 800 items, was a refugee who came to the U.S. in 1936 after he escaped Nazi persecution in Elmshorn, Germany. He went back to Germany for a short time in 1952, following World War II, where he and his wife owned a photo printing business. Leuba Baum passed away in 1997.
“The [photo printing] business was considered to be an innovative technology at the time,” Chevlowe said.
Both Ralph and Leuba Baum, who had a passion for collecting Jewish artifacts, possessed “an intense desire to preserve and pass on memories embodied in the objects they collected to future generations,” according to one of the wall labels within the exhibition.
Over the years, the museum continued to collect more Jewish artifacts from antique stores and dealers while they also received donations from various Jewish museums.
From its establishment in 1982 until 2009, the Judaica Museum was located on the fifth floor in a separate building within the Hebrew Home at Riverdale campus. In 2009, it moved to its current location -- a 5,000-square-foot gallery space within the Jacob Reingold Pavilion building -- after the museum was awarded a furnishings grant by the Department of Cultural Affairs in 2005.
“It’s definitely a hidden gem,” Chevlowe said, when asked about the number of people in Riverdale and in the borough who don’t know about the museum.
"Artfully Arranged" runs through Feb. 2 and features 24 prints, paintings, drawings and mixed media works from 20 different artists, created during the middle of the 20th century and all based on floral themes, including a 1974 screenprint by the late, great Andy Warhol.
This exhibit “delves into how and why artists utilize this classic subject as a vehicle to explore the human condition,” according to a summary on Derfner’s website.
Chevlowe encouraged those who are unable to take an in-person tour of the museum to take a virtual 45-minute tour using Bloomberg Connects, a free arts and culture app the museum joined in October.
“The Derfner Judaica Museum provides a dynamic opportunity to welcome the general public to our Riverdale campus and engage not only with art, but with our residents in a meaningful way,” David Pomeranz said, RiverSpring Living president and CEO.
The museum is open to the public and free of charge Sunday through Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Visitors who wish to visit need a photo ID for admission.
For more information about the Derfner Judaica Museum and items on display, visit derfner.org.