Jewish Museum Milwaukee

Highlights include sections on Golda Meir, the Settlement Cookbook, and the wall-sized Marc Chagall tapestry “The Prophet Jeremiah,” which was made especially for this building.

View the newest special exhibit ‘Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discourse’ to explore how female artists, using textiles as their medium, subvert the social expectations of crafting by lambasting this soft medium with social and political awareness. A powerful vehicle for fostering discussion, this exhibit centers female voices as they reflect on subjects like the right to vote, reproductive rights, and the intersection of femininity, race, history and feminist socio-politics.

Jewish Museum Milwaukee is housed within the Edward Durell Stone-designed Helfaer Community Service Building, a simple, balanced, cream-colored brick building constructed in 1973. The Museum was developed in 2008 after a renovation by Kahler-Slater. The building also houses the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, and Holocaust Education Resource Center. The second and third floors of the Helfaer Community Service Building are not accessible during Doors Open.

To the north of the building, visitors will see a memorial to the Holocaust designed by Milwaukee-born artist, Claire Lieberman. The corten steel sheets give a book-like effect, symbolic of the Jewish identity as “people of the book.”