Museum's Family Week To Celebrate Shared History And Multiculturism

Photo from free exhibit at Museum of Jewish Heritage exploring the identity of the Jewish community in the Dominican Republic.

Families of all backgrounds and ages are invited to attend a free hands-on Family Workshop - Exploring Identity, Immigration, and Memory through Art and Culture of the Dominican Republic at the Museum of Jewish Heritage- A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

This program is presented in conjunction with the special bilingual exhibition opening February 17, Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic (Sosúa: Un Refugio de Judíos en la República Dominicana).

The drop-in sessions, created by the educators at El Museo del Barrio in collaboration with the Education Department at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, will take place all week during school vacation, Monday, February 18 through Friday, February 22. Children and their families will learn about art and culture of the Dominican Republic as they investigate identity, immigration, and memory.

During art-based activities and talks with El Museo del Barrio's artist educators, families will create a memory box incorporating portraiture, writing, and collage.

In 1938, a time when openings for Jewish refugees were hard to find, the government of the Dominican Republic offered to resettle up to 100,000 Jews. Sosúa, an abandoned banana plantation on the north coast of the island, would become a refuge to hundreds of Jews.

The settlers were given resources to cultivate the land they were provided, and built a thriving town - one that still exists today. This exhibition will tell how the settlers were recruited and came to Sosúa, what awaited them there, what role the Dominican and U.S. governments and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee played in the story, how the settlers worked with their Dominican neighbors to establish themselves, and what kind of a town they created. Sosúa speaks poignantly to one chapter in a shared Dominican and Jewish story.

For more information about the exhibition, for which there is no fee, though reservations are encouraged, or Family Week, please call the Museum's box office at 1-646-437-4202 or visit www.mjhnyc.org.