Upon Thy Gates: Chinese and Jewish Traditions at Home

Join us in our beautiful Main Sanctuary for a panel discussion about Jewish and Chinese cultural traditions that have come to represent safety and protection. We are excited to present this panel with scholars Ken Smith, Joanna Lee, and Regina Stein, and folklorist Ilana Harlow.

Learn about Jewish and Chinese traditions regarding ritual objects associated with protecting the home, including when these traditions began, the religious and social concepts behind these ideas, the imagery depicted on these ritual objects, and what happened to these traditions in the diaspora.

This panel discussion is the last in the program series for our current exhibition featuring "Upon Thy Gates: The Elaine K. and Norman Winik Mezuzah Collection." Examples from the collection span the past two centuries, come from all over the world, and are made from an array of materials.

is on view through April 23, 2023.

Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith

Trained as a pianist with a doctorate in musicology, Joanna C. Lee was a faculty member of the University of Hong Kong and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University’s Centre for Asian Studies (2002–2014). She has served as an English-Chinese translator for such organizations as the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall.

Journalist and author Ken Smith has written about arts and culture on six continents for a wide range of print, broadcast, and internet media. A winner of the 2020 SOPA Award for arts and culture reporting and the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music writing, he is the author of Fate! Luck! Chance!...the Making of “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” Opera.

Their Hong Kong-based consultancy Museworks Limited has worked on a wide array of projects, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, David Henry Hwang’s bilingual Broadway comedy Chinglish, Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber for San Francisco Opera, and Kung Fu, a musical based on the life of Bruce Lee for New York's Signature Theater. They served as co-music directors for a recording series of Chinese minority folk traditions for Hong Kong’s Mediafusion Group and were co-founders of the Dimen Dong Eco-Museum in Guizhou province. Co-founders of Museworks Books, they are the publishers of Pocket Chinese Classics and the annual Pocket Chinese Almanac.

Ilana Harlow

Folklorist Ilana Harlow has served as Folklife Specialist in Research and Programs at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and also as the folklorist for the borough of Queens - one of the nation's most ethnically diverse counties. In Queens she documented traditional life and arts and presented artists in public programs. She also attained a White House-conferred National Millennium Trail designation for the route of the NYC #7 train - also known as "The International Express." She is co-author with Steve Zeitlin of Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning. Her dissertation fieldwork was on traditional narrative in Ireland.

Regina Stein

Dr. Regina Stein is the Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum at Eldridge Street. She has taught for Temple Emanu-El’s Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning, the Wexner Heritage Foundation, CLAL, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Dr. Stein is formerly the National Director of the Hadassah Leadership Academy.

Upon Thy Gates was produced by the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education with generous support by the Andy Fund, established in loving memory of Andrea M. Bronfman by her children. Mounting of the show and related programs at the Museum at Eldridge Street are made possible, in part, by the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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