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Lighting Up Your Life

One depicts six grandchildren. Another is gold-plated and marks the 50th anniversary of Israel. Yet another was smuggled out of Russia and made its safe passage through Ellis Island in a brown paper bag.
[additional-authors]
December 5, 2002

One depicts six grandchildren. Another is gold-plated and
marks the 50th anniversary of Israel. Yet another was smuggled out of Russia
and made its safe passage through Ellis Island in a brown paper bag.

Nearly 60 Chanukah menorahs of historic and artistic merit
and borrowed from local collections are on display through Jan. 3 in “The
Triumph of Light” at Aliso Viejo’s Temple Beth El. The chanukiyot are described
in an exhibit guide that accompanies the inaugural exhibition of the
synagogue’s newly opened, one-room museum.

The aim of the museum, endowed by the family trust of
congregants Norma and Reuben Kershaw, is to promote understanding of Jewish
heritage by hosting exhibits that will appeal to the general community.

Since retiring and relocating from New York 12 years ago,
Norma Kershaw, a former professor of art history and archaeology, has not let
her professional passion idle. She was instrumental in bringing a Holy Land
exhibit last year to the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. She started a local chapter
of the Archeological Institute of America that now has 200 members.

The museum is a former classroom near the sanctuary. Paul
Johnson, a Bowers exhibit designer, suggested the top-drawer renovations,
including elevating the ceiling, replacing flooring with stone, adding
directional lighting and built-in display cases.

Exhibits on Egypt and local Jewish history are planned for
next year, Kershaw said, adding that permanent loans of antiquities have
already been promised from collections of Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center
and Jerusalem’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

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