FAQs for LGBTJews in the Federal City

Why do this exhibition?

The Capital Jewish Museum is committed to exploring the culturally rich and diverse stories of Jewish Washington. The stories of LGBTQ+ Jews are an essential facet of this broader history. This history has broad local and national resonance: the exhibition explores landmark legal battles, far-ranging protests, broad cultural change, and the evolution of religious practice.

Our 3^rd floor special exhibition space gives us the opportunity to dive deep into specific themes and experiences, each time drawing new audiences into the museum. We look forward to many more projects like this one—where we build strong connections with different parts of the Jewish world in DC and share previously untold stories.

Why now?

This exhibition is 5+ years in the making. In 2020, the museum had no items specifically related to LGBTQ+ Jewish life in its collection, despite a robust LGBTQ+ Jewish community in the DMV. Responding to this absence, the museum launched an initiative to build deeper connections with LGBTQ+ Jews in the DMV and collect artifacts, photographs, and documents. In collaboration with the Rainbow History Project, we have also added oral histories to the collection. Now, with more than 500 items in our collection and years of research, we are ready to present the first-ever full-scale exhibition on DC’s fascinating, complex, and robust Jewish LGBTQ+ history—the first major exhibition on LGBTQ+ Jewish life in the United States.

This timing is also fortuitous. The exhibition opens along with WorldPride, which is expected to bring approximately 3 million visitors to DC. This year also marks the 50^th anniversary of Beit Mishpachah, DC’s LGBTQ+ synagogue. Both of these synergies should bring visitors to the Museum who might not have known about us otherwise.

Who will this exhibition appeal to?

This exhibition tells the story of national struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and visibility, and the role that Jews, both local members of the DMV community and visitors, played in that struggle. While the LGBTQ+ history of San Francisco and New York are better known, DC, as the seat of our federal government, has been a key site for activism and cultural change that shaped policy for the whole country. With this broad lens, the exhibition will resonate with locals and visitors interested in LGBTQ+ history as well as activism and policymaking more generally.

At the same time, this is a local story about the emergence of LGBTQ+ culture in DC and change in the Jewish world in DC. Based on archival collections from Beit Mishpachah, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and various synagogues and Jewish institutions, visitors will learn about change within the local Jewish community and the pathway towards greater LGBTQ+ acceptance and belonging. The exhibition concludes with a look at Jewish ritual change related to gender and sexuality, including liturgical and linguistic changes. While our examples are DC specific, these changes have unfolded in Jewish communities across the country as well as other faith-based groups. As a result, we anticipate the experiences of the DC Jewish world to resonate with visitors and locals alike as they reflect on similar trajectories in their own religious communities.

Across our marketing efforts, we are emphasizing these themes to build as broad an audience as possible.

What will visitors see from CJM’s collection in the exhibition?

The vast majority of images and objects on view will be from CJM’s collection. There are only a few photographs and objects in the exhibition from outside the Museum’s archives. These include the outstanding work of DC-based photographer Joan E. Biren (JEB), who began her career photographing lesbians in the 1970s and went on to be one of the most significant photographers of LGBTQ+ life and activism. JEB’s archive is held at GW Special Collections and we feature several of her images in this exhibition. The other major loan from a different institution is the quilt square we are borrowing from the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt.

Is this exhibit family-friendly?

Yes. Like all CJM exhibits, LGBTJews explores stories across a wide array of topics, including business, sports, the arts, activism, religion, politics, family, sexuality, and personal identity.  The Museum’s Education staff has developed a guide that will help families navigate the exhibition. The guide will help make the rich history, stories, and inspiration of LGBTJews more accessible for all ages. Parents and caretakers are invited to use the guide together with their little learners to support their understanding and help them connect to the universal themes of the exhibition: identity, community, civic engagement, and standing up for others.

School group tours are being organized for middle and high school students, with more information on our website.

What will be covered/on display in the exhibition?

Timeline of LGBTQ+ history

Down one long hallway, visitors travel from the 1800s through the current day in five time periods highlighting significant events in LGBTQ+ history with an emphasis on Washington, DC, and the local Jewish experience.

Lavender Scare 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called “Lavender Scare” kept thousands of LGBTQ+ Americans out of serving in the military or working for the federal civil service. This section highlights the work of Washingtonian Frank Kameny in protesting this discrimination

Bet Mishpachah

CJM recently acquired the archive of Washington, DC’s LGBTQ+-friendly synagogue, founded in 1975 as only the 4^th such congregation in the country. Visitors will see selections from the collection for the first time ever on view, which will document the founding of Bet Mishpachah, the struggle for acceptance in the broader Jewish communal institutions and change in Bet Mishpachah’s policies and practices over time.

AIDS Crisis and AIDS Quilt

The Jewish community’s uneven response to the AIDS epidemic is explored through ephemera from Jewish organizations as well as personal stories. The museum is honored to be able to display a quilt square from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt honoring the memory of David Green and several of his colleagues at the Library of Congress who died from complications due to AIDS.

DC as the Federal City

Here, laws are made; Congress is lobbied; protests march between the White House and the Capitol building. What happens in DC affects the entire nation. This section explores Jewish involvement in “capital moments” including the incarceration of homosexual patients to St. Elizabeths (the federal government’s mental health hospital); activism at NIH during the AIDS crisis, a timeline of Supreme Court cases related to LGBTQ+ rights; and an exploration of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s inclusion of non-Jewish gay victims.

Bars, Clubs, Welcoming Spaces

Visitors will have a chance to see examples of welcoming spaces across the city over the past century. This section includes guides to LGBTQ+-safe businesses from different eras in DC history, Jewish LGBTQ+ clubs and social groups, and the dress that DC’s turn-of-the-21^st-century Jewish drag queen Ester Goldberg wore during her days in the city.

Oral Histories

The Museum collaborated with the Rainbow History Project to conduct oral histories with LGBTQ+ Jewish Washingtonians. These oral histories serve a larger purpose that stretches beyond the duration of this exhibition. They are now available, to researchers, along with all of our oral histories, which we continue to collect as an ongoing initiative.

Religious and Ritual Change

Some Jewish communities alter and adjust ancient liturgy and practice over time. This section explores the ways in which local synagogues have developed new language for rituals, prayers, and music. Visitors have the chance to see some 21^st century rituals and learn some words in nonbinary Hebrew, a third-gender grammar initiative used by some local congregations.