Educational Programmes

Remembrance is the key to Jewish culture and has a great influence on both the overall concept of the Museum and its contents. Remembrance is also active confrontation, and the Museum is thus a place of encounter, communication and discussion.
Do you want to find out about the Jewish Museum Vienna? Jewish religion and the history of Jewish Vienna together with information about the museum as an institution? All programmes listed here are suitable both as an introduction and for more intensive study. The theme is remembrance, is encountered at all three sites.

Programmes

From bottom to top

(Kindergarten, primary school)
How does a museum function? What is allowed and what not? A rally is organised to arouse interest in the Museum and in the objects behind glass or on the walls, old, modern, beautiful, cool and full of history …
Jewish Museum Vienna 

Celinas Stories

(Kindergarten, primary school)
Celina lives in the Museum and knows everything about the exhibits because they talk to her at night: about Jewish festivals, the Torah and the synagogues in which the objects were once used. Celina can also speak some Hebrew and as a special gift there is a Hebrew tattoo!
Jewish Museum Vienna

Museum interview

(for Wienwochen year 6 to 9 and undecided pupils)
Using worksheets, the pupils discover in three groups the three floors of the Jewish Museum Vienna permanent exhibition. They find out about Jewish festivals and the history of Jewish Vienna and consider what a Jewish museum should be like — after 1945, after the Shoah and today in Vienna. The museum guide accompanies the pupils and provides additional information. Questions and discussion are not only allowed but also encouraged. 
Jewish Museum Vienna

The words of the Museum

(for Wienwochen year 10 to 12 and undecided pupils)
The pupils work in three groups, each one investigating a different part of the permanent exhibition. They also look for words, text segments or sentences on showcases, walls and objects relating to religion, history and the museum as an institution, in other words the expectations connected with a Jewish museum and whether they are fulfilled or not. 
Jewish Museum Vienna

Snapshot!

(All ages)
The Jewish Museum Vienna has to design a new folder and poster and is looking for good ideas. With a Polaroid camera the pupils search the three floors of the permanent exhibition for the five best objects or situations for the new folder and poster and justify their choice. The special feature of this programme is that the pupils seek out the object to be discussed and determine the way in which they visit the Museum themselves. 
Jewish Museum Vienna

new collection item 

(All ages)
15 items — everyday, amusing, curious — form the basis for this programme. The pupils work in teams and are required to find a place in the permanent exhibition for the item. Connections with Jewish religion and history are communicated and the participants are also called upon to reflect on the reason for and significance of a Jewish museum in Vienna today. 
Jewish Museum Vienna

Inventory please!

(Age 15+)
In this unusual workshop, five objects from the Jewish Museum Vienna Visible Storage Area are examined. The participants are told that the objects have just arrived and have to be entered in the inventory. This is a complicated task and is designed to provoke reflection on details. The pupils assume the role of museum curators and create an inventory entry for the object. Size, condition, insurance value, date — how can these things be established? In doing so the participants discover that objects in the Museum all have a story to tell.
Important: limited number of participants. Advanced registration required. 
Jewish Museum Vienna

Museum memory

(Primary schools)
What did Vienna look like in the Middle Ages? Where was the Jewish quarter? What happens in the synagogue? What does the rabbi do all day? What toys did children have in the Middle Ages? What food was served on the plates shown in the display? Was it kosher? A fascinating journey through the Museum and in time — pay attention and you might win the Museum memory! 
Museum Judenplatz

See & find – on top and underneath

(Age 12+)
There are three alternatives for this programme. It provides information on the first Jewish community in the Middle Ages and its dissolution in 1421 and includes the ruins of the medieval synagogue as a basis for information about the Jewish religion. Judenplatz and the Shoah memorial are also included as a place of remembrance.
 - Worksheets with additional information
 - Search game with text cards
 - Search game with picture cards 
Museum Judenplatz

Zachor!

(Age 15+)
The imperative of the Hebrew word “remember” is the title and subject matter of the programme. Starting at the Shoah memorial on Judenplatz the pupils consider various strategies to remember the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. Zachor! does not communicate historical facts but poses the difficult question of how to design a commemoration that is meaningful, convincing and adapted to the 21st century. 
Museum Judenplatz

Planning a Museum

(Age 15+)
What do young people expect from a Jewish museum? What should be exhibited? After a brief introduction, in which statements by the pupils are collected, the participants are offered a short tour of the objects and architecture of Judenplatz — from the outside to the inside and from top to bottom. Then the pupils have to decide what they would get rid of, what they would keep and how they would design the museum site. PLANNING A MUSEUM is a confrontation with Jewish history and with the question of whether and in what way it should be the object of an exhibition.
Museum Judenplatz