Philadelphia's National Museum of American Jewish History

[Tripatini]

There are a lot of Jewish museums out there these days, but this one, unlike most, is not about biblical history, the Holocaust, or Israel. It's about an ethnic group in a country where people could (and can) forge new paths, where one of the themes that touches me throughout its four floors is American Jewry's 350-year tug-o'-war between traditional practices (e.g. keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath, marrying other Jews) and assimilating. It's a story that will ring true to almost any hyphenated American, whether yourbubbe came from China, Mexico, or Morocco... keep reading