A major inspiration for the exhibit was Dr. Mara Cohen Ioannides’ book of the same name. The process for the book started in the 1990s, when Ioannides was still teaching in the MSU English Department and Dr. Donald Holliday, at that time the editor of OzarksWatch Magazine, asked her to do an edition about the Jews of the Ozarks.
"But he did it in a very Ozarks way," said Ioannides. "He came in and he said 'we've never done an issue on the Jews of the Ozarks.' And I'm a northeasterner, you know? I lived in New York City, my parents were from New York City, and I went 'oh, I guess you haven't.' And we did this a couple of times before I realized that he was asking me to do an edition. So I did an edition."
Published in the late 1990s, that ended up being the most-republished edition of the OzarksWatch at that time. That inspired Ioannides to start work on a longer history, which eventually became Creating Community. The idea for the exhibit came about during collaborations with History Museum curator Joan-Hampton Porter, but the conditions for the exhibit to actually happen didn't line up until now.
Ioannides also consulted on the exhibit, working on written materials and facilitating the borrowing of artifacts. One important job of the exhibit, she said, is to convey the character of Judaism as a faith to a mostly unfamiliar audience.
"You can’t talk about the history of an ethnoreligion without talking about the religion," said Ioannides.
Thus, the exhibit is full of religious artifacts, or 'Judaica,' a word you probably haven't encountered until now. Many are loaned from Temple Israel, whose board had to approve the loaning of the artifacts, some of which are more than 100-years-old, including, for example, a piece of calligraphy in three languages dating back to the 1890s.
Ioannides also collaborated with museum staff on a timeline of Jews in Springfield. The idea is to situate that history in a timeline of broader history.
"And why is our Jewish community so important to Springfield, and important to Missouri, and important in a larger context? And especially now, especially in the current political context, we need to understand why our minorities are so important to the creation of our great nation," she said.
Creating Community will run from February 5 through June 1. Ioannides will be leading walking tours Downtown as a supplement to the exhibit. Information on that and more to come at the History Museum website.