Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme

The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme (French pronunciation: [myze daʁ e distwaʁ dy ʒydaism], Museum of Jewish Art and History, abbr. mahJ) is the largest French museum of Jewish art and history. It is located in the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais district in Paris. The museum conveys the rich history and culture of Jews in Europe and North Africa from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Its fine collection of religious objects, archives, manuscripts, and works of art promotes the contributions of Jews to France and to the world, especially in the arts. The museum's collections include works of art from Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani. History of the museum In 1985, Claude-Gérard Marcus, Victor Klagsbald, and Alain Erlande-Brandenburg launched a project to create a museum of Jewish art and history in Paris , backed by the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture, represented by Jack Lang , Minister of Culture. The project had two goals: first, to provide Paris with an ambitious museum dedicated to Judaism and second, to present national collections acquired from the reserves of the national museum of the Middle Ages. At the time, only a modest museum devoted to Judaism existed in Paris, on. History of the collection The museum's permanent collection was assembled from three main sources. The first is the Musée d’art juif de Paris, whose collection was donated. It consisted mainly of European religious objects, graphic works by Russian and German Jewish artists and artists from the School of Paris, and architectural models of European synagogues destroyed by the Nazis. The second source is the Musée national du Moyen-Age in Paris, known as the musée Cluny. This collection was built up by Isaac Strauss, a French Jew from the 19th century. He collected 149 religious objects.