COMMENTARY MUSEOLOGY
The practice we describe as commentary museology (kommentármuzeológia) combines the principles and methods of new museology with those of the classical Jewish interpretative tradition. The concept can also serve as an example for other museum types: it shows how a source community’s museum heritage can be exhibited using ‘its own’ methodology rooted in the same culture. Even if the methodology originates from antiquity, when applied appropriately, it has the capacity to present heritage in a manner that makes it relevant today.
The commentary
The term commentary is used across a broad spectrum in a variety of different contexts. It typically denotes an analytical explanation ‒ or alternative interpretation ‒ of ancient texts. Its use in the modern art and reception theory discourse was pioneered by Hans Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode), first published in 1960 (Gadamer 1984). Commentary is one of the most characteristic genres of Judaism. In that context, however, it is not only a philosophical interpretation of texts, but also a sacred element of Jewish culture.
Zsuzsanna Toronyi: Rabbi Samuel HaNagid gave the first overview of Jewish textual interpretation methods in the 12th century. His list comprised the following: augmentation, explanation, enquiry, difficulty, solution, refutation, supporting opinion, contradiction, necessity, tradition, and interpretation. A remarkable tool of the method is the ‘unsolved problem’ (‘teyku’ in Hebrew and Aramaic) that leaves the solving of certain issues to future commentators.
Jewish tradition holds that at the Revelation on Mount Sinai, in addition to the written teachings (Torah, the Five Books of Moses), Moses also received their oral amendments, explanations, and commentaries, which were to unfold for every coming generation through the continuous study and reinterpretation of the texts. Hence, the meaning of things is inherently connected to and immanently contained in lived tradition, and their contemporary interpretation will be made possible through continuous study (Scholem 1971: 289). The philosophy of the Jewish people is shaped by incessant debate, questioning, and the ongoing scrutiny of this oral tradition and the Talmud, which, by the 6th century, had recorded in writing textual interpretations by hundreds of rabbis (Fishman 2011: 121‒122). Old debates and interpretations are as much a part of today’s tradition as newer approaches. An important aspect of this practice is that it continuously studies outdated or rejected ideas alongside currently accepted interpretations.
Zsuzsanna Toronyi: “Rabbi Abba said that Shmuel said: For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed. These said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion, and these said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion. Ultimately, a Divine Voice emerged and proclaimed: Both these and those are the words of the living God. However, the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel.” www.sefaria.org In other words, both opinions are important and deserve to be studied, but only one of them should be referred to as a guide in everyday life.
The genre of commentary still exists today, as the interpretation of texts is a continuous practice in Jewish communities (Schorsch 2003: 171). However, as a result of secularisation, it is only a relatively small community that refers to the scriptures as a guide in everyday life; yet nowadays their cultural relevance prevails in a circle that is wider than ever before. The content and methodology studied only by religious Jewish men for centuries have now become accessible for previously excluded groups through easily comprehensible English translations and original language versions. A likely consequence of this process is that previously unheard commentaries, explanations, and other voices will appear (such as women’s readings), contributing to the multivocality, multiperspectivity, and subjectivity that were already strongly present in texts.
The concept
I have conceptualised the theory of commentary museology as a possible methodology for Jewish museums (Toronyi 2012).
Zsuzsanna Toronyi: Why do we speak of Jewish museology? Jewish museums were founded in the first few decades of the 20th century, a century after the proliferation of modern European museums. They followed the example of either encyclopaedic museums that aimed to display universal human civilisation or national museums that preserved the cultural heritage of nation states. Yet by the end of the 19th century, these institutions had become specialised and their encyclopaedic repertoires were split into ethnographic, fine art, applied art, etc. collections. This separation did not happen in Jewish museums, their collections are still organised according to the principles at the time of their founding; only the emphases in interpretation have shifted over time.
The creation, definition, and theoretical and methodological elaboration of the term was necessary, on the one hand, for successfully integrating the museum as a relatively new institution into Judaism’s practice of preserving memories and passing on heritage. On the other hand, adapting the interpretative practice of Jewish tradition made it possible to display Jewish heritage using a methodology that is a fundamental characteristic of both the exhibited culture and the self-reflexively revealed museology.
“We can think, for example, of the Jews of the diaspora, bound in daily devotion to the rituals of tradition, who ‘as peoples of memory’ found little use for historians until their forced exposure to the modern world.” (Pierre Nora)
The idea that the elements and methodologies of traditional Jewish thinking can be applied in secular life may be traced back to Haim Nahman Bialik’s theses from 1917, which formed the basis of cultural Zionism (Bialik 2000: 45‒87). In the shaping of secular Jewish national identity, a key role is played by revaluating meanings primarily associated with religious consciousness in the diaspora, and adapting them to secular life (Ohana 2003: 3‒4).
The theory of commentary museology does not describe a new perspective, but interprets a practice comprising modules common in general museology ‒ using, in our case, the philosophical system of Judaism. With the democratisation of the museum as an institution and the appearance of new museology, discursivity, and participative museum practices, everything that we can learn from Judaism’s interpretative practice is already present in the critical thinking on museums. Its definition and systematisation, however, may mean that through an awareness of components and an exploration of correlations, we would use these practices in a more conscious and reflexive manner.
New museology and multivocality
Modern disciplinary museums accumulated objects from the past ‒ deemed important because of their aesthetic value or symbolism of power ‒ and exhibited them in a manner akin to the display of icons or idols, looking inaccessible, untouchable, and excluding all possibilities for questioning or debate (Duncan 1995). New museology, which appeared in the 1980s and strives to reform the traditional museological approach, assigns a more significant social role to museums. According to its principles, institutions that look after cultural heritage are obliged to be in constant communication with source communities and take an active role in preserving and shaping community identities. In new museology, the exhibition holds up a mirror to the audience and supports participants of varying skills and from diverse backgrounds by constantly raising new questions, which contributes to developing a more responsible mode of social thinking. In this framework, only meaningful objects play a role in the exhibition; their narratives convey the identity and collective memory of the society that established the museum. Different interpretations are not presented separately, but in a way that they complement each other, combining the museum’s traditional (art historical, ethnographic, historical, etc.) approaches (Bal 1996: 201‒208).
Another new approach in contemporary museum practice, textual interpretation, treats objects, their juxtaposition, and the exhibition space as a single unit, and interprets the exhibition’s narrative as a text with coherent meaning and overarching content (Mason 2011: 17‒33). This is where the museological adaptation of the Jewish interpretative tradition fits in: preserved and passed on elements of cultural heritage are displayed alongside the relevant interpretative corpus, which results in multivocality. In other words, Judaism’s traditional textual methodology is applied to objects. Thus new museology’s critical and open practice, as well as a Jewish museology founded, inter alia, on the tradition of Judaism, are both apt at creating multivocal museum situations.
The practice of commentary museology
Commentary museology is the practice described above: instead of texts, objects are subjected to the most in-depth analytical interpretation, unravelling their references, relations, and all possible narratives. Similarly to the Thoracic textual tradition, objects are only the skeleton, the corpus, to which every generation, every interpreter has to match their own commentary and explanation suitable for the given era and life situation (Scholem 1969). The traditional Jewish method can also be adapted to displaying (exhibiting) and interpreting objects in the museum: the commentary and contextualisation remains, but instead of texts, it is applied to the displayed objects awaiting interpretation.
Zsuzsanna Toronyi: Tamid, the permanent exhibition of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives (2017) achieves this by juxtaposing objects and displaying related texts alongside them. The texts raise questions and dilemmas that visitors can formulate their own answers to with the help of the exhibited objects. These objects allow for several different interpretations and may point out important contradictions and tensions even by themselves, without using the texts as reference points.
This method helps reveal several of the objects’ former and potential future narratives and interpretations, as well as the network of connections between them. Similarly to studying the Talmud in Judaism, what visitors encounter are not definite answers and interpretative frameworks; instead, the exhibition encourages them to navigate the multitude of ‒ often contradictory ‒ readings, find the ones most suited to them, and, most importantly, keep raising further questions.
The method of commentary museology helps prevent the compartmentalisation of the public’s access to museum heritage into the interpretative frameworks of disciplinary museologies and museum types (art, ethnography, history, etc.). Moreover, the method can facilitate multidisciplinary interpretation, which helps reveal further connections between objects and phenomena. From the perspective of commentary museology, the function of exhibition objects is not to illustrate familiar stories or pre-made narratives, but to unravel the autonomous meanings and phenomena that lay dormant inside them ‒ a process aided by presenting all their possible readings (commentaries) alongside them. Their reception does not call for continuous, linear reading, but for a creative linking of disparate parts. This is also the practice of traditional Jewish learning, which is very similar to acquiring knowledge online: there is no fixed order of processing information; with the help of hyperlinks, separate units of thought and bodies of text are interpreted simultaneously.
Commentary museology as a participative practice
In Jewish museums, commentary museology tries to explicate material and immaterial culture through Judaism’s own interpretative system instead of traditional museological practice. Not only does this reveal the content hidden in objects and exhibited materials, but also the methodology necessary for their processing.
Zsuzsanna Toronyi: The Jewish cultural integration of the museum as an institution is an ongoing process, through which the outlook and methodology of new museology is made compatible with Jewish collective thinking. The conservation and interpretation of heritage thereby becomes a quasi-sacred process, in which the application of traditional Jewish methodology ensures the preservation of shared cultural heritage and its interpretation according to Jewish traditions.
Ever since the foundation of the first public collections, visiting a museum has been a ‘multimedia experience’: the visitor simultaneously looks at the objects on display, reads the explanatory texts about them, and interprets the surrounding space, as well as the visual and other signs created by the organisers. The way the objects are juxtaposed, ordered, or accentuated are all added interpretative content that collectively make up the museum experience. In new museology, participative and collaborative work is given a prominent role, which enables visitors to comment and actively shape the exhibition. The displayed cultural phenomena are thus not finite, but generate continuously expanding content through the practice of commentary. Commentary museology can therefore also be applied in showing collections and exhibitions where the goal is no longer to present the community’s own methodology, but to serve the source community’s interest by including outsider opinions and perspectives.
Zsuzsanna Toronyi