Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art/Day One of the Birthday Week

  

     This past week was my birthday week and I had a goal I wanted to meet this year, and that was to go and do things I have on my bucket list that I created. I started this last year in 2022 for my birthday and I had gone to places such as the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie museums, the Tulsa Botanical Gardens, I ate at Sisserous Caribbean Restaurant for the first time in downtown Tulsa, etc.  I, of course, did not go do all of these activities in one day, but rather went to them throughout the week and I am glad I did that because I felt weirdly productive doing it. Since I have more time recently, I been wanting to meet goals that I have put into this bucket list just so that I can remind myself that I have done things I wanted to do and had met them. This is really the main major reason why I go to so many events like I do, to be able to experience I haven't before while I can and still have the time. I digress. For the past week I had planned on going to seven places, but I ended up going to six. Four of these places are in Oklahoma City, so I had planned one day dedicated to solely doing that.

   On Monday May 22nd, I went to the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in the Tulsa/Jenks area. I actually didn't know there was a Jewish art museum here in the area and I was excited to finally find out. I always been fascinated with Jewish culture for some reason, and come to find out that I do have Jewish ancestry on my mother's side of the family, so I was excited to see what was there. There was a lot of reading involved,  especially in the Holocaust section, so it does take time and attention to get through the museum. I felt like I learned more there about the Holocaust, even if it was just a little bit more, than I remember learning in school, especially about the rebellions by the Jewish in the ghettos. It was also explained in this section that the Jewish had regularly encountered discrimination throughout the centuries solely based on their practices, such as circumcision, and belief, even during the Roman times. Just because it was different from other cultures. Also, I have learned that the Jewish people were also blamed by some group of people for the start of World War I for the means of profiting off of it. It is so crazy how long they have been facing discrimination. I did remember learning about how disabled people were often experimented on first then exterminated, and I had never heard anybody or anything else talk about that since I learned that years ago. I had actually learned that in a docu- series I believe on Netflix, not in school. This museum does mention about that and how the Nazi party considered the disabled as useless and waste of space, and that's so horrible. Of course, the Nazi party anyone that wasn't Jewish, like gay people, people who were involved in the Masonic groups, the gypsies (informal name first the group), and anybody outside the ideal. I kind of knew about some of that, anyway, beforehand.

     My favorite stuff out of all of it is absolutely the stained glass art. I love stained glass art, I think it looks so cool with the variants of color involved. I also loved looking at the different Torahs they had displayed there. I never had the opportunity to actually see one in person. I thought it was interesting that there were a couple reasons, that I remember, why the Torah was read with a handheld device like in Bar/bat Mitzvahs, one of being that the the document is too sacred to physically touch with fingers. I also read that the paper or parchment that is used to create Torahs actually reacts chemically to something on our hands, and it tends to damage it in a way.

     The museum, I felt like, was very informative. I have to warn anybody that if you are interested to visiting the museum, there are a lot of reading involved. I am so use to art museums and galleries that I am not accustomed to having to read a lot during a museum visit. That sounds sad,  but that's the truth. It will definitely take time to navigate through the museum.

     That was my first day of my birthday week!