Derfner Judaica Museum + Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale

Current Exhibitions

August 30–September 16, 2026

This exhibition features RiverSpring Living resident Daphne Victoria Johnson’s vibrantly colored abstract paintings, character portraits, and a mixed media sculpture. Johnson uses a variety of materials, including cut glass, glitter paint, and acrylic paint on canvas to experiment with texture, creating compositions with aesthetic and emotional resonance. As she states, she imbues the art-making process with her own joyful energy. The exhibition poses the question: How do we define joy? Learn more >>

Image: Daphne Victoria Johnson, Fanta-Sea, detail, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

Tradition and Remembrance: Treasures of the Derfner Judaica Museum

Ongoing

With approximately two hundred and fifty objects, this exhibition drawn from the permanent collection explores the intersections of Jewish history and memory. The stories of objects used in traditional Jewish practice are interpreted in light of the role of memory in shaping both individual and communal identities. Among the featured objects in the exhibition are a silver filigree vase, ca. 1911, and an early copper alloy Hanukkah lamp, both from the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts founded in Jerusalem in 1906. Other objects come from near and far, including a set of eighteenth-century German Torah implements, a handsomely illuminated nineteenth-century Italian marriage contract, and a second- to fourth-century lamella amulet. Learn more >>

Image: Zygmunt Menkes (b. Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv, Ukraine, 1896–d. Bronx, New York, 1986), Cohanim Blessing, detail, ca. 1940s. Oil on canvas, 30 x 22 1/2 in. Gift of Erica and Ludwig Jesselson and Family in Memory of Leo Forchheimer, HHAR 1007.