The Aron Museum at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal

In 1953, when the Aron Museum at the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal opened it was the first museum of Jewish ceremonial objects in Canada. In its early years, Rabbi Stern—in his vision of the collection, the Aron family as benefactors and the artist Sam Borenstein who helped to select the pieces, played significant roles in the development of the museum. This article explores the original description of the Aron Museum to show how the humanistic and aesthetic values attributed to the items followed the pattern of pre-Holocaust Jewish museums and exhibitions. For a variety of reasons the religious, ethnographic and historical interpretations of the ceremonial objects of the Aron Museum were initially minimized in its public display. Today, the provenance and memory associations of these objects as well as an explanation of Jewish rituals more fully express the multi-layered meaning of Jewish ceremonial art. Résumé Lorsque le musée Aron ouvrit ses portes en 1953, au temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom à Montréal, il était le premier musée d’objets cérémoniels juifs au Canada. Durant ses premières années d’existence, le rabbin Stern, avec sa conception de la collection, les membres de la famille Aron en tant que bienfaiteurs et l’artiste Sam Borenstein, qui contribua à sélectionner les objets, jouèrent des rôles significatifs dans son développement. Cet article explore la description originelle du musée Aron afin de montrer la manière dont les valeurs humanistes et esthétiques attribuées aux pièces exposées suivaient le schéma des musées et expositions juives d’avant l’Holocauste. Pour des raisons variées, les interprétations religieuses, ethnographiques et historiques des objets cérémoniels du musée Aron était initialement minimisées dans l’exposition publique. Aujourd’hui, la provenance et les associations mémorielles de ces objets, aussi bien que l’explication des rituels juifs, expriment plus pleinement la signification multi-niveaux de l’art cérémoniel juif

Picturing Her: Seeing Again and Again

DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2011.002

William Notman’s Portrait Photographs of the Wealthy English-speaking Girls of Montreal: Representations of Informal Female Education in Relation to John Ruskin’s “Of Queens’ Gardens” and Writings by and for Canadians from the 1850s to 1890s

This essay considers nine portrait photographs of the wealthy English-speaking girls of Montreal, taken in the photographic studio of William Notman (1857-1891). These photographs, now located in the Notman Photographic Collection at the McCord Museum of Canadian History, are also accessible through the museum’s website. The analysis focuses on these images as a pictorial record of the informal education of girls according to the beliefs and convictions of the upper-middle-class. Central to this inquiry is John Ruskin (1819-1900), recognized for his vision of how girls should be educated. With Ruskin’s “Of Queens’ Gardens” (Sesame and Lilies, 1864) as a basis for discussion, this paper also explores the sentiments and opinions expressed in magazine articles, novels, books, and other texts about girls that were read in Canada between the 1850s and the 1890s. The objective in aligning particular visual representations with corresponding historical texts is to explore how the ideals of a girl’s upbringing are embedded in Notman’s portraits, and conversely how the images illuminate the texts.raphs of Montreal girls by William Notman (1857-1891) located at the McCord Museum (accessible through the museum’s website) as a record of the ways girls were inculcated with educational values. Central to this inquiry is John Ruskin (1819-1900), highly recognized for his vision of how girls should be educated. With Ruskin’s essay "Of Queens’ Gardens" (Sesame and Lilies, 1864) as a guide, I demonstrate how Canadian publications mirrored Ruskin’s precepts, which is not to suggest that these authors were merely mimicking Ruskin’s words. The reason his wise counsel was so well received in Canada was because most of what he said fit with the progressive ideas that were gaining acceptance during this era. By extrapolating from Ruskin and Canadian sources, my objective is to show how these texts reveal the messages embedded in Notman’s photographs of girls and conversely how the images illuminate the texts

In Situ Detection of HY-Specific T Cells in Acute Graft-versus-Host Disease–Affected Male Skin after Sex-Mismatched Stem Cell Transplantation

HY-specific T cells are presumed to play a role in acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) after female-to-male stem cell transplantation (SCT). However, infiltrates of these T cells in aGVHD-affected tissues have not yet been reported. We evaluated the application of HLA-A2/HY dextramers for the in situ detection of HY-specific T cells in cryopreserved skin biopsy specimens. We applied the HLA-A2/HY dextramers on cryopreserved skin biopsy specimens from seven male HLA-A2+ pediatric patients who underwent stem cell transplantation with confirmed aGVHD involving the skin. The dextramers demonstrated the presence of HY-specific T cells. In skin biopsy specimens of three male recipients of female grafts, 68% to 78% of all skin-infiltrating CD8+ T cells were HY-specific, whereas these cells were absent in biopsy specimens collected from sex-matched patient–donor pairs. Although this study involved a small and heterogeneous patient group, our results strongly support the hypothesis that HY-specific T cells are actively involved in the pathophysiology of aGVHD after sex-mismatched stem cell transplantation