Other installations include a diamond dealer’s store, three dioramas (3D perspective models) projecting scenes from early Johannesburg and numerous scale models, including several synagogues. There is also a typical smous (itinerant pedlar) cart from which a remarkable variety of goods such as textiles, buttons, costume jewellery, patent medicines and kitchen utensils would have been sold to farmers, who were isolated from big towns.

Visitors can experience the reality of a reconstructed shtetl, a typical East European village inhabited by Jews. They can continue to explore their European origins in the Discovery Centre, a bank of computers which also provides online information about South African villages and towns, home to many pioneering Jewish communities. The special section on migration contains in-depth information on the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter in London, way station for those Jews leaving Eastern Europe, as well as the shipping manifests of those immigrants who made their way to South Africa. A search facility on family trees is also accessible. Click here to submit your Family Tree.

A video wall entitled ‘Culture Among Cultures’ portrays similarities and differences in the
rites of religious passage of South Africa’s diverse communities, promoting understanding
and commonality.

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