When she joined the Maltz Museum team in late January, Hadas Binyamini hit the ground running. She’s already started collaborating with volunteers, attending community events, reaching out to partner organizations and assessing the organization’s educational strengths and opportunities. Luckily, we were able to find a few moments to talk to her about her background, the position and her plans.
What appealed to you about the Museum’s mission?
A focus on diversity and tolerance enables the Maltz Museum to provide a unique and invaluable space for students to engage in critical and constructive dialogue. I can’t imagine a space more appropriate than the Museum to allow students to examine the meaning of their own identity (Jewish or not), experiment with different ideas and ask tough questions about the history of racism in its many forms.
What’s one learning experience you participated in that really made an impact on you?
I spent the majority of the summer of 2014 in Berlin with the Leo Baeck Summer University. In the program, we learned about Jewish life in Germany through academic study, tours and by meeting members of Berlin’s Jewish community. I learned that the memory of German Jews who lived in the 1930s should not be defined by the destruction of Europe’s Jewry, but by the creations and culture of a complex and vibrant Jewish experience. I took the opportunity of being in Berlin to explore my personal relation to the city. My grandfather, born in 1920, grew up in an East European Zionist family in Berlin. (He was named Binyamin Ze’ev after Herzl.) My grandfather and his younger brother, Rafa, escaped to Palestine in 1938, and were among the approximately 120,000 Jews who were able to find refuge from genocide there. I walked through the neighborhood where his family lived, with houses lined on the banks of the Spree, and I tried to imagine what the streets of this once Orthodox Jewish neighborhood looked like.
Explain what you do for the Museum.
I am responsible for the school and educator programs. Our school tours utilize The Temple-Tifereth Israel Gallery, An American Story and special exhibits to complement and enhance traditional classroom learning. I make sure that our educational offerings support the current needs of school and community educators. In collaboration with our dedicated staff and volunteers, I am developing an original curriculum that will allow students to reflect on contemporary forms of social injustice through interaction with Cleveland’s Jewish history.
What’s one thing you’d like to do to enhance the student engagement with the Museum?
In addition to developing interactive and engaging school offerings, another goal of mine is to encourage high school students to become visible leaders in discussions affecting their own communities. I want to ensure our efforts empower students to use their creativity and energy to form strong and socially conscious communities. Informed by the diverse histories and cultures of Cleveland’s Jews, students will gain the tools to take action for what they believe.
