FREEDOM AND FESTIVALS; HANUKKAH MEETS LINCOLN AT CENTER.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Staff Writer

Abraham Lincoln's stovepipe hat and spectacles, George Washington's presidential china, cannonballs from the Revolutionary War, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln.

They're all on display beginning Sunday at the Skirball Cultural Center. And although the items sound a lot like the basis for a Fourth of July exhibit, they convey a deeper message just in time for Hanukkah: Freedom is a treasured concept both the Jews of the world and America's founding fathers valued.

That commonality of principles is the theme of the Skirball's new long- term exhibit, which opens to the public in reconfigured, redesigned galleries at the museum, just off the San Diego Freeway (405) in the Cahuenga Pass.

``We are striving for a strong Jewish identity ... values that we have inhabited for over 4,000 years,'' said Uri D. Herscher, Skirball president and chief executive officer. ``Those values fit with the democratic traditions of American life. They're a perfect fit.''

Which is why it's interesting to note that in 1790, George Washington corresponded with a Rhode Island rabbi, whose words ``to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance'' became part of the first president's political vocabulary.

And Lincoln, shortly after signing the 1863 document that freed the slaves, countermanded an order given by Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant for all Jews whom Grant considered Southern spies to get out of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.

``Lincoln and Washington are icons of American history,'' said Robert Kirschner, the Skirball's program and exhibit director. ``But people don't know their connection with Jews in America.''

In the quest to explain the Jewish experience in the New World, the reopened galleries with $250,000 worth of new display cases, lighting, theater areas and audio fittings, showcase about 1300 items. There were 1,000 previously on display.

The new exhibit includes memories of the great and the humble, the rich and the poor, the famous and the ordinary.

Along with displays showcasing Jewish luminaries such as actress Molly Picon, baseball great Hank Greenberg, pants merchant Levi Strauss and Reform Jewish leader Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, are trinkets, clothing and other precious items brought in trunks and knapsacks to this country by Jewish immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

To give visitors a look at early American Jewish life, 25 feet of showcases that look like turn-of-the-century storefronts hold tools used by farmers, tailors, doctors and other workers. There are also re-creations of a turn-of-the-century newsstand and a settlement house kitchen.

There's a re-creation of a European classroom where young Jewish children went to school mostly boys, but one rare photo shows a class of girls taught by a female teacher. And there's a reproduction of a 1900s American classroom, complete with a 46-star American flag and presidential portraits on the walls.

``We want to show how people actually lived,'' Kirschner said.

The museum has gone out of its way, too, to make children welcome. Mornings at the Skirball are reserved for school tours. New tabletop display cases have been built at kid's-eye level, and in the American classroom, a screen can be lowered from the ceiling to turn the area into a small theater.

In the gallery that showcases the immigrant's journey to America, there's a trunk filled with durable, not-so-rare items of clothing shawls, vests, jackets, hats and more so children can dress up to look like the immigrants might have as they sailed into New York Harbor.

There are two ``stars'' of the new exhibit a life-size reproduction of the ornate, gold-tinged shrine that held the Torah in an 1866 synagogue in Berlin, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1943, and an original typescript of the 1935 Nuremberg documents, which laid the groundwork for Adolf Hitler's planned extermination of the Jews.

The shrine has been remodeled and taken from behind railings that kept visitors out. Now, anyone may mount the marble steps, walk across the black-and-white checkerboard floor and open the doors of the ark where the Torah is kept, as it was in the synagogue.

And the Nuremberg documents, confiscated by Gen. George S. Patton in the waning days of World War II, are housed in a somber, black, knifelike showcase, with the papers bearing the rare signature of Hitler himself.

While some may think Jews would shun contact with documents that set in motion the extermination of millions of their ancestors and others, Kirschner said it seems only fitting that they wind up in a museum of Jewish culture.

``The papers meant to destroy the Jews are in the hands of the people they were meant to destroy,T he said. TIt's the ultimate irony and the best place for them.''

Skirball kicks off

its new

exhibit

Events celebrating the new exhibit begin as early as today and continue through February. Here's a look at what's on the schedule:

2 p.m today: Tom L. Freudenheim, deputy director of the Judisches Museum Berlin, will speak on ``The Jews of Berlin: Yesterday and Today.''

2 p.m. Dec. 12: Martin E. Dannenberg, who served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946 and witnessed the discovery of the original Nuremberg documents in Eichstaett, Germany, in conversation with Skirball president Uri D. Herscher.

2 p.m. Jan. 9: Harold Holzer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art will speak on ``Abraham Lincoln: The Last Best Hope of Earth.''

2 p.m. Feb. 13: John Rhodehamel, curator of American historical manuscripts at the Huntington Library, will speak on ``George Washington: The Great Experiment.''

2 p.m. Feb. 27: Peter Levine, author and professor, will speak on ``Sport and the American Jewish Experience.''

Admission to all talks is free with museum admission. Each lecture includes a gallery tour. For more information or reservations, call [phone].

- Carol Bidwell

Festival shines at the Skirball

Food, theatrics, music, storytelling and crafts for kids, tours of reopened museum galleries plus the lighting of the candles for the third night of the Festival of Lights will be part of this year's Hanukkah Festival on Sunday at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Events begin at 11 a.m. and run until 4 p.m. at the museum, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.

Actor Fred Savage will read from two books of Hanukkah stories, with illustrations projected on a big screen, and actress Lauren Levian will play three different characters - a Jewish immigrant, her daughter and an Irish immigrant in a one-woman show chronicling the characters' first year in the United States.

The Brandeis-Bardin Klezmer Ensemble will play traditional Jewish folk music with a fusion of Sephardic, jazz, swing and Middle Eastern sounds.

And children can print their own wrapping paper, make a Hanukkah lamp from wood, fashion a blessings board, make oil lamps and puppets of characters from the Hanukkah story. The museum will also have computers available so visitors can see the Skirball's collection of vintage European-made postcards bearing messages back and forth between New World immigrants and their Old Country family and friends. Festival admission is free with the $8 adult admission to the museum; students and seniors pay $6; and members and children younger than 12 are admitted free.

TAdvance tickets aren't required, but they might save people from standing in long lines to get in,`` said festival organizer Amina Sanchez. For tickets, call [phone].

For those who don't want to stand in line at the movies on Dec. 25, the Skirball will show ''An American Tail,`` the story of Fievel Mousekewitz, a young Russian mouse who searches for his parents in a new land, at 1:30 p.m. Admission to the film is free with museum admission. The museum will be open from noon to 5 p.m.

- Carol Bidwell

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos, 2 boxes

Photo: (1 -- 2 -- cover -- color) The new country

Museum exhibit celebrates the experiences of early America's immigrant Jews

(3) A replicated hand from the Statue of Liberty represents the experience of Jews coming to America in the gallery additions at the Skirball Center.

(4) A detail of a photo in the Americana New World House of study shows how Jewish and other children learned to assimilate into American culture.

(5) Grace Cohen Grossman, curator of Jadaica and Americana at the Skirball Cultural Center, looks over pictures.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer

Box: (1) Skirball kicks off its new exhibit (See text)

(2) Festival shines at the Skirball (See text)