(Jewish Group) Southern Jewish museum to find new home in New Orleans this fall
A museum dedicated to examining Jewish life and culture in the South will make its New Orleans debut early this fall — eight years after its original Mississippi location closed its doors for the final time.
Renovations began last February to transform part of the former office building at 818 Howard Ave. into the new home of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE), which will span across two stories and contain 9,000 square feet of exhibition space.
The museum will explore Southern Jewish history chronologically from the past 300 years, a feat Executive Director Kenneth Hoffman said was a challenge given the varied experience of the community across the 13 Southern states featured in the museum.
Exhibits will start with the post-colonial period and follow the immigration of Jewish people from Northern and Eastern Europe to the Southern United States. Many became merchants, giving farmers a way to sell their goods, but they still had to grapple with being in a new country and living in the Bible Belt, where they were a religious minority.
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