Museum of the Art and History of Judaism — Attraction in Paris

It would be easy to miss the entrance to the MAHJ on Temple St. just north of Rambuteau, especially when Temple below Rambuteau is so busy. The security is very tight as you'd expect, with metal detectors and isolated walkthrough rooms (i.e.: so only one person at a time can get through and into the main museum are).

Once inside, the stark yet very tranquil courtyard with a single status of a French (i would imagine Jewish as well) solider with a broken sword greets you. From there you progress to the main building behind the statue. The building(s) have been beautifully restored and update. The traditional white limestone merged newer construction techniques were of interest alone and are not what one would expect in a museum of this character.

The exhibit itself walks you through a variety of Jewish artifacts and their connection to Jewish history...like priest robes, torahs and even synagogues.. At the end is the connection between France and Judaism with an emphasis on the Dreyfuss Affair...which I knew of but this was in-depth including artifacts from the time. Very interesting!

If you want to learn a little more on Jewish history and artifacts and it's connection to France this would be a good experience. It is also a very peaceful break from a hectic part of Paris. Enjoy!

TIME: I would budget...

The museum has an entire system of discrimination set up in case you are not native French. We paid full price for two tickets, yet when we wanted to visit the temporary exhibition on the 1st floor, the guards told us that it's only in French, we said it's no problem and wanted to enter and then all of the sudden they said we can't go in because it's full. We went to the ticket office and the person there was even more rude and we figured out that they didn't even give us headphones with the tickets for the temporary exhibition, that's how the guards upstairs knew to not let us in. Again, we paid full price and this exhibition was included in the price, they just didn't want to let us in because 'it was all in French'. Bottom line, they were more than happy to take our money, but not as happy as soon as they figured out we weren't natives. Same thing happened to another person who was standing in...

This museum would have been a lot better if they would have posted the explanations in English, in addition to French. They have no trouble making their website and ticket sales available in English, just haven't taken the trouble to post explanations of the exhibits in English. The audio guide in English is useless - you listen to long periods of mournful minor key music, with an occasional brief statement, in far less depth than the French written explanations - and you're lucky if the audio device doesn't run out of charge during your visit. C'mon, head of museum! Post translations in the museum of ALL the explanations of the exhibited items, in English right next to the French. It's not rocket science! The way it is right now, it's a shame that the exhibits are not accessible to those who don't speak French - which is probably the majority of...