Flavorful look at Jews, ‘Beyond Chicken Soup’

Chicken soup is known as the “Jewish penicillin,” but there’s much more to the deep connection between the Jewish experience and healing, argues a new exhibit.

“Medicine has been impacted through Jewish participation and Jewish identity has also been shaped by our association with medicine,” says Deborah Cardin, deputy di-rector for programs and development at the Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM).

“Beyond Chicken Soup: Jews and Medicine in America” is the theme of the latest JMM exhibit, which will likely travel to other Jewish and secular museums around the country beginning in 2017. It is an immersive, explorative, and hands-on journey through the 20th-century experience of Jews and medicine.

The featured attraction of the multi-room exhibit are the famous manuscripts of Baltimorean ophthalmologist Harry Friedenwald, which are on loan from the National Library of Israel and are making their first appearance in the United States since 1943. The manuscripts are displayed in a recreation of Friedenwald’s study. Among the hand-written manuscripts is a July 1922 letter from Friedenwald to his son Jonas, also an ophthalmologist, describing the challenges Jewish students faced getting into medical schools due to early 20th-century quotas limiting the number of Jewish students that could be accepted.

Harry describes a meeting he organized with fellow doctors to review Jewish admis-sions to John Hopkins University’s medical school. Harry wrote of the “inquisition” into the religious adherence of applicants, which was conducted by asking for statements from each applicant’s mother. Harry hoped to end the quotas.

The rest of the exhibit walks visitors through a medical school, a 1920’s medical office, a hospital, a nursing station, a pharmacy, and a fitness center. When visitors walk into the medical school in the exhibit, the first thing they encounter is a brick wall—“a metaphor for the challenges that Jewish students encountered,” says Cardin.