As it was exposed to the action of some higher powers (conflict in the Jewish community, and then the epidemic, ie the Kovid pandemic 19), our Museum had to postpone the exhibition twice about one of the most important segments of Jewish material and spiritual culture – mourning customs. and the Sephardic cemetery in Belgrade. Finally, this complex project, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, was realized on August 10, 2021, when we in our Museum officially opened an exhibition called BET OLAM – Jewish House of Eternity in Belgrade, and published the eponymous, illustrated, bilingual (Serbian – English) catalog. Although the epidemiological situation, after the relative calming down, started to worsen again, more than twenty people came to the opening of the exhibition. The terrible heat did not bother the museologists to organize a “ball under masks”, and it did not bother the guests either. Colleagues from related institutions, representatives of the Jewish community of Pancevo, friends of our Museum, and one special guest, Davor Salom, came and borrowed his tahrihim – funeral clothes – for the exhibition.
The exhibition was opened by the authors, Vojislava Radovanović, Museum Manager, and Barbara Panić, curator and author of an expert monograph on the Jewish, Sephardic cemetery in Belgrade, which was published more than two years ago, and which was supposed to precede the exhibition…
Admittedly, not so much to precede. Anyway, all of a sudden everything was successfully connected and the opening of the exhibition took place in a great mood.
The exhibition was set up in our Museum (in a specially equipped part of the permanent exhibition) until the end of August.