New MSJE exhibit explores history of regional Jewish Orphans’ Home in New Orleans

Photo of young residents of the Home, appx. 1915. Written on the back is “Our babies.” Courtesy of Marlene Trestman and the Crosby Family Collection, Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience

For decades, the Jewish Orphans’ Home was a unique place in New Orleans, and since its closure, the successor organization, Jewish Children’s Regional Service, has continued to help Jewish children in need.

The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience will open a new special exhibition about the Home’s legacy, “Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans,” on April 10. It will run through January 25.

Based on author and historian Marlene Trestman’s critically acclaimed book of the same name, the exhibition explores this unique institution and the legacy it left for thousands of Jews across the South.

Members and friends of the museum are invited to an opening event on April 9 at 5:30 p.m., co-hosted by Jewish Children’s Regional Service. Trestman will speak at 6 p.m., along with Curator Michael Jacobs. The program will also be available on Zoom.

Jewish Orphans’ Home postcard, appx. 1907.

“The Home” opened in 1856 after a yellow fever epidemic, and was the first purpose-built Jewish orphanage in the country. It served a seven-state region corresponding to B’nai B’rith District 7, and by the time it closed in 1946, over 1,600 children had found a home there.

Considered “the pride of every Southern Israelite” while in operation, the Jewish Orphans’ Home was a uniquely nourishing place, defying usual stereotypes and assumptions about institutional homes for children while making a positive impression about Jews in and beyond New Orleans. Residents went on to become successful businesspersons, social and civic leaders, homemakers, military veterans, a police captain, a pioneer in radiology, and a prolific advocate before the United States Supreme Court.

Trestman has been assembling biographies of the Home’s alumni and posting them on her website.

Trestman’s decade of archival research on the Home and interviews with more than 100 residents and descendants were born from a personal connection. “The Jewish Orphans’ Home was deemed ‘a magnificent monument of Hebrew benevolence’,” said Trestman. “As a recipient of aid myself from the Home’s successor, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service, I am excited to share this chapter of the Southern Jewish experience with the museum’s visitors.”

Before writing “Most Fortunate Unfortunates,” Trestman wrote the biography of Bessie Margolin, “Fair Labor Lawyer,” the aforementioned advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court. Margolin had been left at the Home at age 4 in 1913, and was raised there for 12 years, with her sister and brother. Writing that biography sparked Trestman’s curiosity about the Home and its other alumni, leading to her second book.

The Special Exhibition contains sections on the formation of the Home, daily and religious life of its residents, its progressive “Golden City” self-governing system, the establishment of Isidore Newman School for the orphans and paying pupils from the community, and profiles of many of the Home’s leaders and residents, composed by Trestman.

Several seldom-seen artifacts from the Home will be on display, including an original, handwritten registration book dating back to 1855, a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt, and a plaque honoring Home alumni who served during World War II. Also highlighted are rare personal items owned by residents of the Home, such as photo albums, wedding china, a childhood locket, and the cardboard suitcase that one young man carried when he left the Home in 1934.

Throughout its run at the museum, MSJE will present a full slate of public programs centered around the exhibition, including presentations by Trestman, a reunion for Home alumni and descendants, and other special events.

This exhibition is made possible in part with support from the New Orleans Recreation and Culture Fund, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.