New Orleans, March 16, 2026 – The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) will open its newest special exhibition to the public on Friday, March 20. “Holocaust Survivors in a New Land: The New Americans Social Club of New Orleans” tells the story of Holocaust survivors who made new lives in the South, becoming citizens, opening businesses, organizing Yiddish-language entertainment and Holocaust memorial programs, and even confronting neo-Nazis. Executive Director Ke

Enter the 2026 MSJE Middle School Writing Contest. Students in grades 5-8 are invited to write about welcoming new Americans and sharing cultural traditions.

New Orleans, January 30, 2025 – For the fourth year, the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience has partnered with New Orleans-area baker SerenaBakesBread to host a series of workshops that fuse Jewish food heritage with New Orleans traditions. On January 25th, the museum hosted a King Cake Challah workshop for children. On the 29th, adults were invited for an evening King Cake Challah Happy Hour. Guests smile with King Cake Challahs In both cases, attendees decorated chal

Destrehan, December 6, 2025 – Michael Jacobs, Curator at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE), delivered the keynote address at the St. Charles Parish Library’s opening of Americans and the Holocaust , a traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association. At the invitation of the library, Jacobs has guest-curated a parallel exhibition, New Americans in a New Land, spotlighting the unique journey that brought one c

New Orleans, September 30, 2025 – In honor of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (October 6-13) the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) has partnered with unCommon Construction to build a traditional Sukkah on the museum’s rooftop. The museum’s Sukkah will serve as both a free communal gathering space and as a venue for a weeklong slate of structured programming. During this annual harvest festival, Jewish households and communities traditionally construct a Sukkah: a

NEW ORLEANS, March 10, 2025 –  A new Special Exhibition, Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans , will open at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE), in New Orleans, on April 10, 2025, and run through the end of the year. Based on author and historian Marlene Trestman’s critically acclaimed book of the same name, the exhibition explores this unique institution and the legacy it left for thousands of Jews across the South.  The Jewi

NEW ORLEANS, March 6, 2024 – The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience is now displaying the oldest artifact in its collection: a silver kiddush cup made in the year 1677. The cup was recently donated to the museum by members of the Fraenkel family, in honor of Albert Fraenkel II (1928-2023) and his brother Francis “Shorty” Fraenkel. Albert had been the eighth-generation keeper of the family heirloom.  Kiddush cups are used by Jews when saying a prayer for “the fruit of th

NEW ORLEANS, January 9, 2025 – The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE),  in New Orleans, is excited to announce that it has received a $1.25 million gift from Dave and  Amy Chapman Fulton to name its new research center, which opened in November 2024. The  Chapman Family Research Center (the Center) will honor Amy Chapman’s Southern Jewish  ancestors, and give scholars, historians, and people seeking to research their Southern Jewish  roots a new home for explorat

NEW ORLEANS, October 14, 2024 –  The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE), in New Orleans, will cut the ribbon on its new Southern Jewish Family Research Center (the Center) on Thursday, November 7, 2024. The new center is the first major expansion of the museum since it opened in spring 2021. The logo for the new Chapman Center The new Center, located on the museum’s third floor, will include an area devoted to artifact conservation and digitization, a secure vaul

NEW ORLEANS, October 26, 2023 –  A new Special Exhibition, A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America, will open at the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE), in New Orleans, on November 17, 2023, and run through April 21, 2024. Pleasant Plains School in Hertford County, North Carolina Through photographs taken and stories collected by photographer Andrew Feiler, a fifth-generation Jewish Ge