The July 20 Musemgoer story for the Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate visits the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience changing exhibit “Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans,” on view through January 25.
The exhibit’s timeline starts in 1855 in the wake of Yellow Fever, an indiscriminate orphan-maker. The institution defied orphanage stereotypes of the day, offering much more than shelter for its residents and initially housing widows as well as “inmates,” as child residents were then called. Religious education was, of course, an important part of life there, but so was secular education: Isidore Newman School was founded in the early 20th century to educate students from the home. Newman’s inaugural enrollment counted 102 children from the home as well as 23 tuition-paying classmates from the community.
Nutrition and healthcare were also emphasized. The home pioneered vaccinating its children against scarlet fever and diphtheria in the 1920s. There are images in the exhibit of residents at play at a summer camp in Bay St. Louis.
“When you really think of these orphanages, you think of like maybe Annie or Oliver Twist,” said Michael Jacobs, MSJE’s collections and exhibits curator. “But really, here it’s a totally different idea. These children were really given some of the best possible accommodations at the time.
“They had baths, they had dining rooms, they had kitchens. They had just incredible dormitories where they focused on cleanliness and being clean and orderly.”
Read the story here. Listen to a podcast interview with Jacobs and Trestman here. Watch a replay of a MSJE public program featuring Trestman and some Orphans’ Home alumni here. Images accompanying the podcast are here:
Thanks to Michael and Marlene, and thanks to you for reading and maybe listening.
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