Permanent collection

An exceptional collection

With almost 30,000 items, the museum's collections are divided into fine arts, historical collections, Judaica and photographs. The tour covers an area of 1,000 m².

The presentation is structured around three themes - chronological, geographical and thematic - covering the history of Jews in Europe and North Africa, the diversity of Jewish communities from Antiquity to the present day, their rituals and beliefs, their material culture and their art. It focuses on the particular case of French Judaism, from the Emancipation to the twentieth century, originally made up of communities living on the fringes of the kingdom (Avignon and Comtat Venaissin, the Aquitaine coast, Lorraine and Alsace) which were swelled, from the Revolution onwards, by successive waves of emigration from Eastern Europe, the Maghreb and the Levant.

From archaeology to contemporary art

As well as exceptional archaeological remains and a major collection of religious objects, the mahJ also has a rich historical and ethnographic collection. Chagall, El Lissitzky, Kikoïne, Modigliani and Soutine and other creators illustrate the Jewish presence in 20^th-century art. Works by contemporary artists, including Kader Attia, Carole Benzaken, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Sophie Calle, Gérard Garouste, Moshé Gershuni, Georges Jeanclos, Moshé Kupferman, Mikael Levin, Michel Nedjar, Moshe Ninio, Nira Pereg, Cécile Reims, Micha Ullman and Max Wechsler continue to enrich the collection. In a small courtyard, an installation by Christian Boltanski, The Inhabitants of the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in 1939, recalls the mansion’s former occupants, many of whom were deported and never returned.

The galeries

The visit is structured around the following sequences:

1^st floor