Ljubljana City Museum launches series of exhibitions on world religions

The Jewish community in Slovenia is a very small one and not much is known about their life. An exhibition on Jewish religion and culture at Ljubljana City Museum was billed as a good opportunity to find out more about their everyday life.

Janja Rebolj is the author of the project "Museums Connect" and the museum's counsellor responsible for programmes for adults:

"The community is quite small. It is presumed that there are about 300 in Slovenia and 80 people in Ljubljana."

According to Ms Rebolj, people sometimes had problems coping with the capital's diversity and the new project aims to present this diversity with an emphasis on religious communities:

"We would like to strengthen mutual understanding and respect especially for differences. So the project was about exploring differences and we started with differences in religions.

"We must admit that the response was very good and we were very glad about that. So the visitors could see first the exhibition where they were able to get some information, basic information on Jewish religion but they could also see quite a lot of objects of everyday life of the Jews today."

Visitors had a chance to taste some typical Jewish dishes and try a few traditional dance steps:

"There were additional programmes, which considered other parts of everyday life. For example, we had a cooking workshop, where we prepared some special Jewish dishes, we had a dancing workshop where we danced in circles and people were able to write their name in Hebrew."

As part of the "Week of Jewish Community", the community members of Ljubljana were actively involved in the exhibition, as Janja Rebolj explains:

"Their response was very good, so they participated on all occasions and they shared their knowledge, they were prepared to share information with our visitors."

Visitors to the city museum in Ljubljana will not only learn more about Jewish religion but also about several different religious groups. They will have a chance to select the next group that will be presented as part of the project. They can give their suggestions at the exhibition or on the museum's website as Janja Rebolj of the city museum told me:

"I must admit that at that moment when we just closed the first exhibition I don't have the results yet but as I had a quick look a lot of people are interested in Buddhism and from the society's part a lot of them are prepared to work with us."