BEKI Ancestors 2022

High Holiday Exhibition

The BEKI community is highly diverse with not only a mixture of Jews from different Jewish cultural and geographic backgrounds, but Jews who come from mixed heritage, Jews who came to Judaism by choice, and Jews who can trace their Jewish heritage back generations. We have ancestors who were dedicated to teaching Hebrew, and ancestors who ran successful businesses. We have ancestors who were photographed on vacation and ancestors who posed for formal portraits, both in family groups and alone. We even include the large family of our dedicated office manager Peggy Hackett, who so often is the person who keeps our BEKI family inter-connected. We know so little about each’s others family histories, and in the brief narratives submitted with each photograph we find a visceral connection to the history of the Jewish people and to the history of the USA. Ultimately what ties us together is our connections in the present, the ways in which we listen to each other and help one another.

The exhibition will be up through the Fall months, on both levels of the BEKI Art Gallery.Reflecting the Ethnic Diversity of our Membership

• pre-1950 photographs or paintings of family ancestors
• includes people so close they were considered family
• unidentified people whom family tradition defined as family
• ancestors do not have to be Jewish

“The ancestor’s exhibition warms our hearts and shows us our common threads from diverse backgrounds,” noted Jessey Palumbo after viewing the second edition of the BEKI Ancestors’ High Holiday exhibition. Jessey credits Stacey Battat’s book, Thin Threads Real Stories of Survival & Recovery, with opening up her sense of our connections. She found so much inspiration in this book that she donated a copy to our BEKI Library.

This year’s exhibition was the work of many hands, from scanning and editing photographs to runs to IKEA for frames, to editing the extensive labels, framing the photographs, and finally the big installation. The team included Mimi Glenn, Margie Hirshfield, Diane Krevolin, Karen Markel, Margaret Olin, Bruce Oren, Helen Rosenberg, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Eva Shragis, and Marjorie Wiener. BEKI staff members Michael Barone and Peggy Hackett gave essential support.

Suggested Donation for photographs reproduced by BEKI volunteers:

Larger Print with frame $18
Smaller Print with frame $12

Larger Print no frame $9
Smaller Print no frame $8