Planning for a traveling exhibition, a catalog, a website, and educational and public programs examining Jewish foodways as expressions of tradition and adaptation.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM), a leading center of American Jewish history and culture, requests NEH support to research and plan an interpretive project titled Chosen Food: Adapation, Identity, and Debate in American Jewish Foodways. This grant will provide funds for a team of humanities scholars adn design consultants to help JMM staff and its institutional partners plan an integrated intitiative consisting of a 2,000 square-foot exhibition which will travel to at least three venues across the United States, an exhibition catalog and interpretive brochure, public programs, educational activities, and an interactive website. "Chosen Food" will interpret the many meanings of Jewish foodways to a large, multicultural audience across the country. For Jews, as for other Americans, food is never just about consumption: food is a means to observe and to celebrate, to maintain tradition and to makr transition, to preserve memory and to produce new meaning.

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, website, curriculum, and public programs exploring the history of the scrap industry in America.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM) is developing Scrap Yard: Innovators of Recycling, a temporary, traveling exhibit that will allow visitors to explore the evolution of the American scrap industry over 250 years through the stories of people who created it – immigrants, their descendants and their successors. In addition to the 2,000-sq ft, experiential exhibit exploring scrap recycling through the lenses of history, sociology and technology, JMM intends to publish a companion book and free interpretive brochure, create a website, plan public programs, collect and curate select oral histories, and develop educational curricula. The exhibit will feature historical objects, oral histories, texts, images, multimedia, and interactives. Resources will be drawn from JMM’s collections, the archives of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), and a variety of other sources. Scrap Yard opens at JMM in 2019 and begins a national tour in 2020.

Implementation of a traveling exhibition and related publication, programs, and online resources examining Jewish American foodways.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM) requests NEH support for a major exhibition and related publications, programs, and robust web-based resources titled Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity. For Jews, as for other Americans, food is never just about consumption: food is a means to observe and to celebrate, to maintain tradition and to mark transition, to preserve memory and to produce new meaning. American Jewish foodways, in short, open up a host of conversations about the history and experience of being ethnic and American in the 21st century. After opening at the JMM in Baltimore, the exhibition will be traveled to New York, Atlanta, and Portland, OR. By incorporating historical and cross-cultural perspectives, the Chosen Food project will demonstrate how the humanities reveal the extraordinary in the everyday, bringing to diverse public audiences a new understanding of history and culture through a close examination of food and foodways.

To support consultation for a traveling exhibition on the dynamics of Jewish identity and inter-group relations in small towns in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, catalog, and public and educational programs interpreting the history and cultural meanings of Jewish vacationing in America.