The Museum’s gallery for Judaica creates a permanent presence for works of art made for Jewish communities around the world to fulfill the practice of their faith. More than two dozen objects are presented in the inaugural installation of the gallery, which has been endowed by the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation.

The installation benefits from a partnership with the Jewish Museum in New York City, which launched in 2022 with the exhibition Beauty and Ritual: Judaica from the Jewish Museum, New York. The gallery is also an important component of the World Faiths Initiative, which explores the central role of religion and faith in many works of art in the MFAH collections and exhibitions.

The opening of the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Gallery for Judaica completes the suite of galleries in the Law Building developed to reflect the diversity of Houston’s communities. The galleries adjacent to the Herzstein Gallery are devoted to the arts of Korea, Japan, India, China, and the Islamic worlds.

The Herzstein Gallery features an outstanding collection of historical Judaica recently acquired by the MFAH. Among the highlights are an early-19th-century silver and gold Torah Shield, an especially precious 14th-century illustrated prayer book, and rare 5th-century oil lamp. Loans from other Houston collections are also included.

The MFAH has an important Torah on loan from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London. In the early 1960s, the rabbi and congregation of the city’s Westminster Synagogue purchased 1564 scrolls from the Czech government and founded the Memorial Scrolls Trust. The trust repaired the scrolls, housed them, and has lent them to Jewish congregations, museums, and other organizations around the world. The Torah on view is from Boskovice, a town in the present-day Czech Republic. Boskovice had a long Jewish history and a vibrant Jewish community that was destroyed by the Nazis in World War II. In 1942, the Germans commanded that Torah scrolls and Judaica objects be sent to Prague. Many scrolls, including the 1869 Boskovice scroll with its rare silver Atzei Chaim, actually survived the war after being stored for more than 20 years in the former Michle Synagogue in Prague.