Exhibiting Jewish Culture in Postwar Britain: Glasgow's 1951 Festival of Jewish Arts

The Festival of Jewish Arts in Glasgow was the first and largest Jewish festival in Britain, conceived as a response to, and timed to coincide with, the Festival of Britain in 1951. Held at Glasgow's McLellan Galleries on Sauchiehall Street from February 4–25, 1951, the event showcased works from over fifty internationally renowned Jewish artists, antiquities dating back from the thirteenth century, musical performances, films, lectures, a book display, and a run of sell-out performances of S. An-sky's The Dybbuk. In this essay, I offer the first sustained account of the festival by bringing together available documentation and analyzing the "performance of display" and perspectives on Jewish culture the festival offered. As this essay argues, viewing the material and tangible elements of the festival alongside the social and cultural ideals of its organizers reveals a complex negotiation between the historical place and space of the festival, the concerns of the community, and the tensions between minority and mainstream Scottish and British culture. The Festival of Jewish Arts thus provides a rare window through which to view a Jewish community grappling with issues of loss and reconstructing identity in the aftermath of Nazi atrocities, while at the same time trying to transcend the perception of their Otherness and respond to British anxieties about Jewish refugees and the founding of the State of Israel.