museums i recently visited ii

NoteThis was supposed to be one post, but it grew so long that I had to split it up. Here are/will be the others. For my trip to Berlin, my plan was to check out some museums there about German history and Jewish culture, and of course some sightseeing. For my first museum in Berlin, I decided to go to the Jewish Museum. I didn’t take any pictures there because it felt like a place of mourning. Maybe it’s my upbringing that made me not take a single picture in something that felt like a funeral or maybe it was my disappointment in what I saw. Either way, no pictures from the place, but lots of thoughts. The museum had one focus: the Holocaust. It bothers me that Jewishness is again singularly defined by what happened to Jews, focusing on them as objects of history rather than agents in their own right. There was nothing about their vibrant and long history in Europe (specifically Germany) and I was so, so deeply disappointed to see the Jewish Museum be basically a Holocaust museum. It…