New Exhibition Explores the History of the Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans

Mar 10, 2025
2 min read

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 Jewish Orphans’ Home – known affectionately as “the Home” – opened in New Orleans in 1856 following a yellow fever epidemic, becoming the first purpose-built Jewish orphanage in the country. It served families from Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and western Florida, and by the time it closed in 1946 had provided a nurturing home for more than 1,600 children, many who lived there for ten years or more.

Considered “the pride of every Southern Israelite” while in operation, the Jewish Orphans’ Home was a uniquely nourishing place, defying usual stereotypes and assumptions about institutional homes for children while making a positive impression about Jews in and beyond New Orleans. Residents went on to become successful businesspersons, social and civic leaders,homemakers, military veterans, a police captain, a pioneer in radiology, and a prolific advocate before the United States Supreme Court.

Trestman’s decade of archival research on the Home and interviews with more than 100 residents and descendants were born from a personal connection. “The Jewish Orphans’ Home was deemed ‘a magnificent monument of Hebrew benevolence,’” says Trestman. “As a recipient of aid myself from the Home’s successor, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service, I am excited to share this chapter of the Southern Jewish experience with the museum’s visitors.”

The Special Exhibition contains sections on the formation of the Home, daily and religious life of its residents, its progressive “Golden City” self-governing system, the establishment of Isidore Newman School for the orphans and paying pupils from the community, and profiles of many of the Home’s leaders and residents, composed by Trestman.

Several seldom-seen artifacts from the Home will be on display, including an original, handwritten registration book dating back to 1855, a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt, and a plaque honoring Home alumni who served during World War II. Also highlighted are rare personal items owned by residents of the Home, such as photo albums, wedding china, a childhood locket, and the cardboard suitcase that one young man carried when he left the Home in 1934.

Throughout its run at the museum, MSJE will present a full slate of public programs centered around the exhibition, including presentations by Marlene Trestman, a reunion for Home alumni and descendants, and other special events.

This exhibition is made possible in part with support from the New Orleans Recreation and Culture Fund, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copies of Trestman’s book, Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans, can be purchased through the MSJE store.