CJM in SF

The Contemnporary Jewish Museum in San Fancisco, that opened in June, is like no Jewish museum you've ever seen before. And by that I don't mean its architecture. It was designed by Daniel Liebeskind, and is a smaller and in a way less original version of his iconic Jewish Museum in Berlin. It has some of the same features, a classical old building with the most striking modern additions, including in this case a large blue-black square at one end balancing on its tip. Also, on top is another such structure, the two together supposedly making the Hebrew letters for "chai" or life.
But, it is the inside that really differs, because there is in effect nothing there, this museum is devoid of the past, no Holocaust, no Jewish suffering, no history, only bright open clean spaces, and special exhibits. The two exhibits we saw were one on the interpretation of Genesis by 10 individual artists (not all Jewish). Each one is quite different and some are very interesting. The most itneresting part for me was a series of comments or statements in a videao at the end of the exhibit, that I found very illuminating. The Rabbi of the SF Orthodox synagogue commented that the first book of the Bible "bereshit" (in the beginning) begins with the Hebrew letter "bet", so where is the chapter that begins with "aleph"? Theologians specualte that it is there, but can only be read by God himself. It is written in white letters on a white page, and contains the mystery of the universe, which is beyond human comprehension.
The other exhibit was about William Steig, the cartoonist of the New Yorker, about his life growing up in NY, and his development as a story teller and cartoonist. He also wrote the book about "Shrek" (meaning "fast" in Yiddish), that was later made into three movies. The story is characteristically Jewish in that however much of an ogre he is, he has redeeming features and of course finds his beshert.
It struck me that this museum, located on the west coast of California, far away from the traditional cultures where Jews suffered and were afflicted by hatred and persecution, has tried to start with a clean slate, a tabla raisa. And why not, here there is no history of persecution, in fact no history to speak of at all. So the Jews here need suffer nothing and fear nothing. So their museum reflecting that can be new and devoid of the past. A fresh start.