Emma Shepley explores the centrality of blood in Judaism in an exhibition that’s not for the faint-hearted
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” Shakespeare’s lines echo literally and metaphorically throughout the Jewish Museum’s new exhibition, Blood: Uniting and Dividing. Shylock’s plea, replicated on audio track, is specific to a time and place – 16th-century Venice – but also functions as a universal literary reference to our blood.
Blood: Uniting and Dividing is a skilful exploration of a universal theme through a specific Jewish cultural history. It is a timely, emotive and complex examination of the centrality of blood in Jewish belief, a challenging mix of ritual, iconography, biology, eugenics and genetics.
Blood is “simultaneously the life force of all beings and a pollutant, powerful and forbidden, holy and impure, to be celebrated and avoided”. The attraction of exploring these contradictions is clear: it opens up the paradox at the heart of our cultural and biological relationship with blood. The exhibition has generated national press – a coup for any museum.
The Jewish Museum’s 19th-century terraced exterior, just off Camden High Street, conceals generous modern interior spaces over four floors with object-rich interactive galleries.
The museum sets out to “explore British-Jewish heritage, identity and culture... for people of all backgrounds and faiths”. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the museum opened five years ago and retains the coherence and sparkle of new design.
The temporary exhibition gallery is at the top of the building, where Blood’s introductory wall makes a strong visual statement with a pattern of red swirling veins creating a pathway into the exhibition. Opening statements set out that blood is “life and death... a powerful symbol through which we understand who we are”. The exhibition “presents a cultural history of the Jews and blood, from the Bible to the present day”.
Visceral nature
The display wastes no time in getting down to specifics. Ritual and Belief, the first of four themed sections, gives a concise explanation of the centrality of blood in Judaism, from the “bloody rites” of circumcision, to menstrual purity and kosher butchering.
The instruction to circumcise is a central rite and controversial today. The exhibition contrasts the modern medicalisation of circumcision with an ornate 19th century 11-piece silver set of circumcision tools and 18th century blessing cups.
Judaism expressly forbids the consumption of blood – animals must be ritually killed and all their blood drained. The caption for an arresting set of Lithuanian kosher butchering knives notes that they are extremely sharp for the animal’s quick death.
On the wall above are lots of Old Testament directives on blood and flesh. The letters have been painted as though from dripping red blood that streaks down the wall on to a large mound of soaked red sea salt deposited in the corner – salt is traditionally used to absorb the blood from kosher meat.
This blood-stained pile provides an unexpected and theatrical touch that successfully shifts you out of case-by-case shuffle viewing mode and towards the gory reality of the subject in hand.
Spilt blood is also examined in a section about its gendering. Blood spilt in circumcision is thought of as a positive symbol of life and Jewish kinship, but the blood of menstruation as unclean and women considered “ritually impure”.
A post-menstruation monthly visit to a mikveh – a bath for ritual immersion and purification – is recommended for Jewish women.
Listening to contemporary interviews with women describing their experiences visiting the mikveh gives a memorable insight, including the painful complexity of the bath in the cycle of infertility. Stories of menstruation and infertility are rare in museums and are skilfully told here.
Blood in faith
A section called Jewish Blood and Christian Blood explores the theological differences between the two faiths relating to blood and “blood libel” – a persistent, false allegation from the early middle ages that Jews ritually murdered Christian children. The consequences of a small number of alleged cases led to the persecution of Jewish people spanning centuries.
The 13th-century blood libel case of nine-year-old Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln is told through recordings of English folk ballads. Hugh’s body was discovered down a well and his death blamed on 18 local Jewish men, who were hanged for their alleged crime.
During an 1840 blood libel case, nicknamed the Damascus affair, the Times newspaper felt it necessary to publish an English translation of the Passover service to show that it did not involve Christian blood.
And even into the 20th century, a copy of Der Stürmer – an anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda magazine – shows the revival of blood libel myths. Short films explain the doctrines of ancient humoral medicine and transubstantiation with impressive clarity, completing this brief but informative insight into a complex history with a bloody legacy.
Blood and ancestry
A Blood and Race section explores 19th-century eugenics – “ideas of biological supremacy represented in blood ancestry” – and introduces the work of Joseph Jacobs, the first race scientist in Jewishness, who worked with eugenics pioneer Francis Galton.
The Nuremburg race laws are on display to illustrate the brutal end point of this field in “defining individuals by bloodline” with citizenship assigned only to those of Aryan blood. The horrors of the Holocaust are well documented in a gallery below the exhibition.
The final section, Medicine and Genetics, covers the postwar discredit of racial science,
the advent of Aids, blood transfusions and genetics. Science broadcaster Adam Rutherford is compelling on film as he explains how DNA analysis has revealed a picture of immense complexity as to how human characteristics are transmitted through generations.
If we look back in time just a few thousand years we find common ancestors from whom everyone alive is descended. In such terms there is “no such thing as a Jewish gene” and “no such thing as race”.
Visitors are invited to chalk up their thoughts as they leave, answering questions including who are you? What defines you? Why does it matter?
Above these hangs an artwork by Tom Piper, the designer of poppy installations Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red. As the panels suggest, this sculpture, titled Tay Sachs, depicts dividing blood tubes coming from a blood bag and turning into twisting strands of DNA code, illustrating “how our belief in the inherited blood line that bonds races together is down to our DNA”.
“There is nothing more universal than blood,” the exhibition’s superb catalogue states. “Our humanity appears to be drenched in it.”
Blood is an object lesson in successfully reframing collections around big themes – Abigail Morris, the director of the Jewish Museum, cites the Wellcome Collections’s 2011 exhibition Dirt as an inspiration.
The Jewish Museum’s exhibition is ambitious and unexpectedly willing to sacrifice taboos on the altar of enquiry. Enquiring minds are rewarded; faint hearts should steer clear.
Emma Shepley is the senior curator in library, archive and museum services at the Royal College of Physicians, London
Cost £75,000
Supporters Kirsh Family Foundation, David Berg Foundation Exhibition design RFK Architects; Tom Piper Design
Graphic design Northover & Brown Exhibition build and install Factory Settings
Graphic production BAF Graphics
Exhibition films Proudfoot Films Lighting Studio ZNA
Exhibition development Collaboration with the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” Shakespeare’s lines echo literally and metaphorically throughout the Jewish Museum’s new exhibition, Blood: Uniting and Dividing. Shylock’s plea, replicated on audio track, is specific to a time and place – 16th-century Venice – but also functions as a universal literary reference to our blood.
Blood: Uniting and Dividing is a skilful exploration of a universal theme through a specific Jewish cultural history. It is a timely, emotive and complex examination of the centrality of blood in Jewish belief, a challenging mix of ritual, iconography, biology, eugenics and genetics.
Blood is “simultaneously the life force of all beings and a pollutant, powerful and forbidden, holy and impure, to be celebrated and avoided”. The attraction of exploring these contradictions is clear: it opens up the paradox at the heart of our cultural and biological relationship with blood. The exhibition has generated national press – a coup for any museum.
The Jewish Museum’s 19th-century terraced exterior, just off Camden High Street, conceals generous modern interior spaces over four floors with object-rich interactive galleries.
The museum sets out to “explore British-Jewish heritage, identity and culture... for people of all backgrounds and faiths”. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the museum opened five years ago and retains the coherence and sparkle of new design.
The temporary exhibition gallery is at the top of the building, where Blood’s introductory wall makes a strong visual statement with a pattern of red swirling veins creating a pathway into the exhibition. Opening statements set out that blood is “life and death... a powerful symbol through which we understand who we are”. The exhibition “presents a cultural history of the Jews and blood, from the Bible to the present day”.
Visceral nature
The display wastes no time in getting down to specifics. Ritual and Belief, the first of four themed sections, gives a concise explanation of the centrality of blood in Judaism, from the “bloody rites” of circumcision, to menstrual purity and kosher butchering.
The instruction to circumcise is a central rite and controversial today. The exhibition contrasts the modern medicalisation of circumcision with an ornate 19th century 11-piece silver set of circumcision tools and 18th century blessing cups.
Judaism expressly forbids the consumption of blood – animals must be ritually killed and all their blood drained. The caption for an arresting set of Lithuanian kosher butchering knives notes that they are extremely sharp for the animal’s quick death.
On the wall above are lots of Old Testament directives on blood and flesh. The letters have been painted as though from dripping red blood that streaks down the wall on to a large mound of soaked red sea salt deposited in the corner – salt is traditionally used to absorb the blood from kosher meat.
This blood-stained pile provides an unexpected and theatrical touch that successfully shifts you out of case-by-case shuffle viewing mode and towards the gory reality of the subject in hand.
Spilt blood is also examined in a section about its gendering. Blood spilt in circumcision is thought of as a positive symbol of life and Jewish kinship, but the blood of menstruation as unclean and women considered “ritually impure”.
A post-menstruation monthly visit to a mikveh – a bath for ritual immersion and purification – is recommended for Jewish women.
Listening to contemporary interviews with women describing their experiences visiting the mikveh gives a memorable insight, including the painful complexity of the bath in the cycle of infertility. Stories of menstruation and infertility are rare in museums and are skilfully told here.
Blood in faith
A section called Jewish Blood and Christian Blood explores the theological differences between the two faiths relating to blood and “blood libel” – a persistent, false allegation from the early middle ages that Jews ritually murdered Christian children. The consequences of a small number of alleged cases led to the persecution of Jewish people spanning centuries.
The 13th-century blood libel case of nine-year-old Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln is told through recordings of English folk ballads. Hugh’s body was discovered down a well and his death blamed on 18 local Jewish men, who were hanged for their alleged crime.
During an 1840 blood libel case, nicknamed the Damascus affair, the Times newspaper felt it necessary to publish an English translation of the Passover service to show that it did not involve Christian blood.
And even into the 20th century, a copy of Der Stürmer – an anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda magazine – shows the revival of blood libel myths. Short films explain the doctrines of ancient humoral medicine and transubstantiation with impressive clarity, completing this brief but informative insight into a complex history with a bloody legacy.
Blood and ancestry
A Blood and Race section explores 19th-century eugenics – “ideas of biological supremacy represented in blood ancestry” – and introduces the work of Joseph Jacobs, the first race scientist in Jewishness, who worked with eugenics pioneer Francis Galton.
The Nuremburg race laws are on display to illustrate the brutal end point of this field in “defining individuals by bloodline” with citizenship assigned only to those of Aryan blood. The horrors of the Holocaust are well documented in a gallery below the exhibition.
The final section, Medicine and Genetics, covers the postwar discredit of racial science,
the advent of Aids, blood transfusions and genetics. Science broadcaster Adam Rutherford is compelling on film as he explains how DNA analysis has revealed a picture of immense complexity as to how human characteristics are transmitted through generations.
If we look back in time just a few thousand years we find common ancestors from whom everyone alive is descended. In such terms there is “no such thing as a Jewish gene” and “no such thing as race”.
Visitors are invited to chalk up their thoughts as they leave, answering questions including who are you? What defines you? Why does it matter?
Above these hangs an artwork by Tom Piper, the designer of poppy installations Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red. As the panels suggest, this sculpture, titled Tay Sachs, depicts dividing blood tubes coming from a blood bag and turning into twisting strands of DNA code, illustrating “how our belief in the inherited blood line that bonds races together is down to our DNA”.
“There is nothing more universal than blood,” the exhibition’s superb catalogue states. “Our humanity appears to be drenched in it.”
Blood is an object lesson in successfully reframing collections around big themes – Abigail Morris, the director of the Jewish Museum, cites the Wellcome Collections’s 2011 exhibition Dirt as an inspiration.
The Jewish Museum’s exhibition is ambitious and unexpectedly willing to sacrifice taboos on the altar of enquiry. Enquiring minds are rewarded; faint hearts should steer clear.
Emma Shepley is the senior curator in library, archive and museum services at the Royal College of Physicians, London
Project data
Cost £75,000
Supporters Kirsh Family Foundation, David Berg Foundation Exhibition design RFK Architects; Tom Piper Design
Graphic design Northover & Brown Exhibition build and install Factory Settings
Graphic production BAF Graphics
Exhibition films Proudfoot Films Lighting Studio ZNA
Exhibition development Collaboration with the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London