The Material Inventories of Millennial Jewish Lives: Affective Learning and Jewish Consumer Culture at the National Museum of American Jewish History Gift Shop

Abstract

Abstract Down the street from the Liberty Bell and a block away from Independence Hall, Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) offers tourists a Jewish take on America’s past. For Jewish visitors to NMAJH, the museum sets personal narratives in national contexts, embodied by objects that have animated Jewish life for centuries. Most research on encounters between visitors and religious objects in museums is situated within exhibit galleries. Yet this focus on the gallery can overlook the holistic visitor experience in the museum, and the ways that object lessons can also be conveyed outside of the exhibit space. This article draws upon an ethnographic study of 30 millennial generation Jewish visitors to NMAJH conducted in July 2019, and analyzes visitor responses to Jewish objects for sale in the museum store. It argues that the store stimulates affective learning experiences, prompted when visitors respond to merchandise with emotion, aspiration and nostalgia, contextualize these goods within the narratives of the core exhibit, and reflect upon objects for sale in relation to their own lives and livelihoods.