From Home to Home: Jewish Immigration to America
A fully interactive traveling exhibition for school age children

This intelligent and beautifully crafted exhibition examines immigration through child-oriented entry points and captivating problem-solving activities. The fun-filled curriculum-based exhibition enhances the study of Immigration, American History, American Jewish History and Diversity.

In the 28 interactive stations of the exhibition, visitors explore five phases of the immigrant experience: Why Move? Where to Go? What to Take? New Beginnings, Helping Each Other, Change and Influence.

They use a scale to weigh tangible arguments for staying or leaving, peek into miniature dioramas of life in distinct time periods and places, and participate in a family conversation at a dinner table in Germany in the wake of the Nuremberg Laws.

Visitors look at a variety of materials that illustrate the pull of America, and pretending to be immigrants, create their own postcards to influence relatives and friends to follow them to America.

Packing scaled-down objects in trunks, visitors decide which possessions are truly important to them, and then explore the reasons for which particular possessions were brought along by the immigrants.

Once in America, visitors shop in a supermarket in which everything is written in a mysterious code and packaged in unfamiliar boxes. They try to fit a family of ten into a small apartment that doubles as a work place, and peek into miniature dioramas again, this time to see scenes of life in the new country.

Visitors build their own neighborhoods and decide on the character of the community through a democratic process.

Visitors dress immigrant children in their new clothes. Just like real advertisers, they add Jewish elements to local products to make them more attractive to Jewish immigrants, and "Americanize" products brought along by the immigrants from their countries of origin.

Scrolls with illustrated stories of four famous immigrants exemplify the contributions of immigrants in the areas of economy, science, art and social change.

An additional station provides the host institution with space for artifacts and documents contributed by members of the community.