An exhibition of Jewish artistic crafts in the Craft Museum in 1933

The exhibition was created by the then museum's director, Kazimierz Hartleb, and the museum's custodian, Henryk Cieśla. Even before the opening, the Lviv press, including the Jewish newspaper "Chwila", published appeals for exhibits from people who owned Jewish memorabilia. The exhibition consisted of more than 600 exhibits, which were borrowed from private collectors, including Maksymilian Goldstein and Dr Marek Reichenstein, and from synagogues. These were mostly artefacts from the 18th and 19th centuries. The authors expressed their gratitude to the institutions that made it possible to lend the exhibits, namely to the leaders of the Jewish communities in Brody, Ternopil, and Lviv, as well as the leaders of the Golden Rose Synagogue, the Great City and Suburban Synagogues, the Hasidic Synagogue, and the Suburban House of Prayer. The catalogue was prepared by artist Ludwik Lille, art historian Olga Megler, and collector Tadeusz Wierzejski. The museum staff worked on the exhibition as well, including assistant Witold Fedorski and secretary Romana Iżycka. Rabbi Dr Lewi Freund, N.A. Ortner, J. Alter, and N. Siegel were translators; W. Balas and Mr and Mrs Kańczuger contributed as technical staff. The Society of the Jewish Museum Friends, founded in 1931 and chaired by Marek Reichenstein, was also involved in the organization of the exhibition, with art historians, collectors, and artists from Lviv as its members.

In the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, the director of the Craft Museum, Kazimierz Hartleb, noted that the aim of the exhibition was to showcase memorabilia that often went unnoticed. For the authors, it was important that a Polish institution was organizing an exhibition of Jewish art, just as it had previously organized exhibitions of Hutsul and Armenian art. In this way, they said, the museum continued the traditions of the ancient Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and emphasized that there was a place for different groups in the contemporary Polish state. At the same time, as the authors noted, it was in their contemporary Poland that a significant number of memorabilia had been preserved, unlike Western countries and the Soviet Union, which erased cultural differences. The exhibition was also an opportunity to deepen knowledge about artistic centres and artists that had been little known before, such as Stari Brody or Sasiv. It is noteworthy that non-Jewish researchers could have been the researchers of such centres, for example, one of the exhibition initiators was Dr Piotr Kontny, an ethnographer interested in the atara, woven flowers made of silver threads by Jewish weavers in Sasiv.

The exhibition catalogue, the previous version of which was published in 1933, was divided into two parts. The first was entitled Synagogue Memorabilia and included 325 artefacts. Among them were festive attributes, such as Rosh Hashanah (shofar), Yom Kippur (belt buckles), Purim (boxes for the scroll of Esther and a rattle), Sukkot (containers for etrogs, ritual citrus fruits), Passover (supperware), and Hanukkah (a collection of Hanukkah lamps). Other objects included crowns, Torah shields and pointers, Kiddush small glasses, incense boxes, reflectors and lanterns. The second part was entitled Household Memorabilia and contained 244 objects related to the everyday life of Jews. Among them, in particular, were circumcision knives, mezuzahs (prayer cases that were hung on doorposts), marriage rings, Kabbalistic amulets, clothing items, and photographs of tombstones. Visitors to the exhibition could order a full version of the catalogue with illustrations of the most interesting artefacts.

The exhibition attracted many reviews in the Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian press. The lengthy reviews make it clear that the exhibition featured some exhibits that were not in the catalogue. In his review of the exhibition for the "Miesięcznik Żydowski" magazine, historian Jakób Schall mentions paintings, illustrations, and manuscripts in addition to the household and synagogue memorabilia. In particular, he mentioned the Haggadah, a collection of texts for the Passover, illustrated by Artur Szyk, a contemporary artist. Jakób Schall compared it to the medieval illuminated manuscripts and called it one of the central exhibits of the exhibition. Among the portraits, the historian mentions the portrait of Josef Perl, a maskil from Ternopil, as well as portraits of the Wal family, one of whose members, according to legend, became the king of Poland for one night. Another interesting exhibit was a probably fake letter by Herschon Kitever to the founder of Hasidism, Baal Shem Tov.

In her review of the exhibition for the Polish-language Jewish newspaper "Chwila", ethnologist and art historian Giza Frenkel emphasized the fact that the idea for the exhibition originated in a non-Jewish environment. In her opinion, the exhibition was intended to be interesting not only for art historians but also for ordinary visitors, and therefore it was to be very popular among the Jews of Lviv. A review in the Polish journal "Kultura Lwowa" noted that Jewish folk art was "exotic and beautiful, artistically integral and mature", and expressed hope that the idea of a separate Jewish museum would be realized in Lviv. The "Sztuki Piękne", the main organ of the Polish Institute of Arts (pol. Polski Instytut Sztuk Pięknych), also published a review of the exhibition, mentioning that it was a rare event. The review, however, noted that only a few of the artefacts had identified authors and provenance. An article about the exhibition in the Ukrainian newspaper "Dilo" mentioned Ukrainian influences on Jewish folk art that originated in Ukrainian lands.

The initiative to hold an exhibition of Jewish crafts at the Craft Museum demonstrated the desire of certain Polish intellectuals to see Jewish culture as part of their culture, the interest of the Lviv community in Jewish art, and the willingness to work together to preserve Jewish memorabilia. It became a prerequisite for the opening of a separate Jewish Museum in Lviv in 1934.