It’s a cold day in January as Sol Davis, director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, walks through the newly renovated building just days before it reopens to the public. Sunshine pours into the renovated lobby. Printed signs are taped to the walls. The new podcast studio is stuffed with boxes waiting to be unpacked. One of the galleries hums with construction as sawdust fills the air.

Davis is unhurried—he knows everything will get finished and he’s eager for the empty spaces to be filled with community again: “There’s been a lot of anticipation.”

For centuries, Baltimore has been home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the United States, and to this day, it remains incredibly diverse and active. The museum, the successor to the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland, which was established in 1960, is nestled between two historic synagogues—Lloyd Street, housed in a Greek Revival-style building and the third-oldest synagogue in the United States, and the nearly-as-old B’nai Israel, with its more Gothic look—in historic Jonestown.

The first iteration of the museum came about in the 1980s, when the society opened the Jewish Heritage Center, which officially became a museum in the late ’90s. Over the past two decades, it has hosted countless exhibits, programming for families, and a bris or two, but the building has stayed the same. Meaning this newest makeover—one that finally brings it into the 21st century—is long overdue.

“We’ve been talking about the project as really a big step in our evolution into the museum field,” says Davis, who was director of the Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center in Arizona before coming to Baltimore in 2021. “And also, a once-in-a-generation kind of capital investment in Jewish culture in Baltimore City.”

The space, once dark and dated, now feels fresh and modern. Every inch has been reconfigured and reconstructed—down to the gallery floors, which have transformed into a comfortable terrazzo to encourage lingering. And all throughout, there is an emphasis on participation and engagement, moving away from the model where visitors are passive observers who strictly read placards next to photographs.

“What participatory means to us is really an invitation to Jewish Marylanders to co-narrate the story of the Jewish Maryland experience together,” says Davis.

That will be done through changing exhibits and even a new campaign to collect photographs from Jewish Marylanders of their generational families. And the centerpiece? A state-of-the-art production studio to record as many Jewish oral histories as possible.

“The charge we gave to the architects was, how can we move out of a spectator paradigm and really [offer this space] as an experience and as a partnership between the museum and the community,” says Davis.

For him, that also includes opening the door to those who aren’t part of the Jewish community—especially their neighbors from Jonestown, a predominantly African-American community.

“It’s a huge opportunity for us to think about Jewish and African-American relations historically and how we can nourish those relationships in the present.”

The renovations have been helped along by Baltimore Orioles owner David M. Rubenstein, who announced a gift of $1.5 million to the museum last September. The lobby—now named the David M. Rubenstein Exhibition Arcade—is very orange, something Davis says is mere coincidence.

Its design is inspired by 19th-century Parisian arcades, aka passageways, featuring an arched ceiling lined with skylights. There are display cases for artifacts from the museum’s archives, interactive stations, and a large video screen. The museum refers to them as portals.

Which all goes back to one simple purpose, says Davis: “We want to connect Jewish Marylanders with their roots.”

“Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” Paul Simon sings in “The Boy in the Bubble,” the opening track to his landmark 1986 album Graceland. And ever since “The Sound of Silence” first charted in 1965, Simon has been one of those heroes, influencing generations of listeners with his sophisticated, self-aware songs full of yearning and wry humor.

To honor his half-century career, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum created Paul Simon: Words & Music, an exhibit chronicling the singer-songwriter’s creative process and life, which begins its national tour with a residency at the Jewish Museum of Maryland through January 18, 2016.

“This is the first time in many years that the museum has been fortunate enough to be selected as a first venue for a significant national tour,” enthuses Jewish Museum of Maryland executive director Marvin Pinkert. “It was a wonderful coincidence. The Rock and Roll Hall wanted to start the tour on relatively short notice and we just happened to have a three-month gap in our calendar.”

Featuring more than 80 artifacts ranging from guitars to Grammys, plus narration culled from hours of interviews with Simon himself, the exhibit reveals the artistic process that yielded classics such as “The Boxer” and the Graceland album, on which Simon melded traditional Western song structure with South African township music.

“The overwhelming experience of the exhibit is the feeling that the artist is speaking directly to the visitors, as though you’ve just sat down for a cup of coffee,” says Pinkert. “I’ve seen many biographic exhibits before, but this is the first that I would truly call ‘autobiographic.’”

Concurrent to Words & Music, Pinkert has curated An American Tune, which examines the influence Jews exerted on the folk music scene. In addition to artists such as Simon and Bob Dylan, Jewish record executives, club owners, talent managers, and audiences helped to shape the movement.

“These individuals helped develop the cultural environment that was receptive to folk,” says Pinkert. In fact, Pinkert thinks the scene brought more than folk music to the mainstream. “I think of it as a moment when a kind of secular Jewish culture was born.”