Jewish Museum of Belgium
Musée Juif de Belgique

Curious about the history of Judaism? The Jewish museum offers the unique perspective of what it means to be Jewish from the day you’re born until the day you die.

Trace history and culture at The Jewish museum. Follow along paintings, artifacts, pictures, personal letters, and much more. These personal items from across the world, from Europe to Asia, date back to as far as the 18th century. The museum was founded in the 1970s with three main objectives in mind:

• Conserve Belgium’s Jewish heritage
• Create temporary exhibitions that echo current topics
• Offer educational activities for school audiences

What to see

There’s literally thousands of things to see at the Jewish Museum. No, really. They’ve got a total of 750 objects of Judaica (Jewish ceremonial art), 1,250 artworks, over 20,000 photographs, and 5,000 posters, discs, and plenty of cassette tapes.

Don’t let that overwhelm you though - everything is labelled and given a full, written explanation in French, Dutch, and English. The collections are also divided throughout the building into themes:

• Ground floor: find paintings done by a Jewish man who spent his life hiding from the Nazi’s
• First floor: filled with information on the rituals and traditions behind the birth of a Jewish child
• Second floor: paintings from Jewish artists during WWII
• Third floor: has more information on rituals and traditions that are performed when a child moves into adulthood
• Fourth floor: weddings and funerals. What a mix! But both are super important and interesting events in Jewish culture.
• The final stop is the building behind the museum, which contains two floors filled with pictures taken by Jewish photographers

The museum also houses a collection of books written in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Inside, you will find around 25,000 written works by Jewish authors and artists as well as detailed studies of Jewish lineages.