Dayenu &…

February 19, 2026 | Third Thursday Thoughts
Dawn LaRochelle, Executive Director

Dayenu &…

The table was set. The candles were lit. The (very un-kosher) scallops were perfectly seared and tossed with lemon and brown butter. Nick the Brit and I had spent the evening cooking together — our favorite kind of date night — and were finally settling down to our cozy Valentine’s dinner at home.

By all outward appearances, it was a proper Hallmark moment.

Except we were surrounded by 192 framed photographs in 10 cardboard boxes.
And duct tape.
And blueprints.
And the general visual chaos of what looked less like romance and more like moving day Hell.

Those boxes held the physical evidence of the Ampersand Project, a statewide effort to photograph and document Jewish life across Maine. Award-winning Israeli photographer Hedva Rokach traveled more than 5,500 miles just to get to Maine, then logged another 7,000 miles crisscrossing the state, capturing the portraits and stories that will soon fill the Museum in our upcoming exhibition, There Is Always an &.

Somewhere between the scallops and the dulce de leche mousse, I raised my glass and toasted my long-suffering spouse with a single word:

Dayenu.

Yes, I was aware it was Valentine’s Day, not Passover.
No, I had not lost the ability to read a calendar.
And no, I was not requesting a Hallel service in the Museum’s honor.

But it was the only word that came close to capturing the moment.

For those unfamiliar, Dayenu is the Passover song that celebrates the many gifts we’ve received by declaring, after each one: It would have been enough.

And sitting at that table, surrounded by the physical evidence of the last few months, it suddenly felt like the only appropriate way to describe this season at the Museum.

Because honestly?

If we had only launched the Ampersand Project, it would have been enough.

Dayenu, Part I: There Is Always an &

What began as a statewide photography initiative has unfolded into something expansive and multi-layered.

From March 5 – May 3, 2026, There Is Always an & will fill the Museum with hundreds of portraits and stories from across Maine’s Jewish community. Visitors will experience photographs paired with QR codes that link directly to video interviews, allowing community members to share their stories in their own voices. These interviews will launch the Museum’s oral history library, which will live on the new digital Documenting Maine Jewry website currently in development.

Alongside the exhibition, we are publishing a beautifully produced bilingual (English/Hebrew) book… and ensuring it doesn’t simply sit on coffee tables. We will distribute copies free of charge to every high school in Maine, along with a thoughtful delivery plan and teacher-friendly curriculum tools to bring these stories into classrooms.

We are also partnering with Colby College, where students are using the Ampersand Project to help humanize and bring to life the data from the 2024 Maine Jewish Community Study.

The exhibition itself is serving as the prototype for the Museum’s upcoming Core Exhibition Redesign.

In other words, this has never been “just” a photography project. It is an exhibition, a book with statewide educational reach, the launch of a digital oral history library, a college collaboration, and a blueprint for the Museum’s future.

It has also, not incidentally, dominated nearly every waking minute of my every day — and, by extension, Nick’s — for the better part of a year.

It has been inspiring. Exhausting. Beautiful. Terrifying.

And because… Murphy’s Law: on the day we were supposed to begin framing hundreds of photographs, our printer called and announced he had experienced a print malfunction.

Reader, I did not know that was a thing.

He then sent me an image of the ink cartridges.

The ink was on the outside.

Instead of the inside.

Meaning that, from the outset, we were going to be running a week and a half behind.

Dayenu.

Dayenu, Part II: Keepers of the Flame

As if launching a statewide exhibition weren’t enough, the Museum is humming with music this week.

Two of the most celebrated artists in contemporary Jewish music on the planet — David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg — are rehearsing daily in our building for Keepers of the Flame, creating music side by side with intergenerational musicians from our community.

Not teaching a masterclass.
Not dropping in for a single performance.
Spending a full week making music shoulder to shoulder with people of all ages and musical backgrounds.

Which, in addition to being deeply meaningful, is also logistically… lively.

Coordinating rehearsals, schedules, instruments, spaces, and people has been a whirlwind — one made infinitely more manageable thanks to our extraordinary Program Coordinator, Rebecca Moudachirou, who has been navigating the details with grace, patience, and superhuman organizational skills.

This residency culminates in a one-night-only concert at One Longfellow Square this Saturday, February 21, at 7:00 PM, where David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg will perform onstage alongside the residency participants, featuring music created collaboratively during the week — music that exists because this community showed up and made it together.

And here is the raw truth: we are now in the final stretch, working hard to make sure the room is full.

A full house matters. It matters to the artists who said yes to this experience. It matters to the young and adult musicians who showed up with courage and curiosity. And it matters to the future of programs like this, which depend on strong community participation to thrive.

If you’ve been meaning to get tickets, this is your nudge. If you’ve been meaning to invite a friend, this is your moment. Come celebrate the musicians, the collaboration, and the idea that culture grows stronger when communities create together.

Get tickets here 

Dayenu.

Dayenu, Part III: Shalom & Shamrocks

And because we clearly enjoy living dangerously, we are already deep into preparations for our second annual Shalom & Shamrocks.

This festive, flavor-forward evening, created in partnership with the Maine Irish Heritage Center, celebrates the shared immigrant histories of Irish and Jewish communities through food, music, and storytelling.

At the center of the evening is a delicious question: Irish corned beef dinner or Jewish corned beef sandwich on rye? Why choose one when you can have both?

Guests will gather for a joyful night featuring corned beef, cabbage, and colcannon alongside a Jewish deli buffet, with Guinness brownies and black-and-white cookies bringing Irish-Jewish harmony to dessert. Live klezmer and traditional Irish musicians will fill the room, and historian Hasia Diner will help us explore the fascinating history of Irish, Italian, and Jewish foodways in America.

And yes — as I apparently make excellent life choices — Nick, Rebecca, and I are doing all the catering ourselves. Bwa ha ha.

Dayenu.

Dayenu, Part IV: And One More Thing…

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I was a guest presenter at a senior seminar at Colby College. The very next day — the day before Winter Break, when eighth graders are famously at their calmest and most focused — I facilitated an interfaith Delet program for five classes at Bruce M. Whittier Middle School (Poland, ME).

This was a program I had meticulously planned: interactive stations, rotating groups, and a carefully constructed learning arc.

Naturally, the class schedule changed at the last minute from 55-minute blocks to 40-minute blocks. One class doubled in size to 40 students. And the Christian minister on our panel got the flu.

And yet — the students asked thoughtful questions, the panelists connected, and the conversations mattered. The learning happened anyway.

This work is part of our ongoing partnership with 2025 Maine History Teacher of the Year Jamie Karaffa through the Celebrating Rural Maine project: a collaboration that recently led to a podcast conversation about the Holocaust Survivors in Maine civics project and the power of bringing these stories into classrooms across the state.

Dayenu.

There is a phrase I return to often when I think about the Maine Jewish Museum: We have no business doing this.

Itty-bitty museums are not supposed to mount statewide exhibitions.
Itty-bitty museums are not supposed to convene large-scale educational programs across the state.
Itty-bitty museums are not supposed to bring world-class artists to Maine for weeklong community residencies.
Itty-bitty museums are not supposed to juggle multiple major initiatives at once.

But this itty-bitty Museum does do these things — because our community deserves them.

Because the stories matter.
Because representation matters.
Because connection matters.
Because if we waited until we felt perfectly ready, perfectly resourced, and perfectly comfortable, the work would never happen.

And if you’ve made it this far through a newsletter built around Dayenu, you are clearly in training for a six-hour Passover Seder.

Which brings me to the heart of the matter: we can only keep doing this because of people like you.

Our Annual Appeal closes on February 28, and this is the moment when we ask our community to help us keep saying yes to the brave, slightly audacious things itty-bitty museums are not “supposed” to do.

If you’ve been meaning to give, this is a beautiful time to do it.

Donate

Back at the Valentine’s Table

At some point during dinner, Nick looked around at the boxes and asked, gently, “Do you think it will all come together?”

I did not hesitate.

“Yes,” I said. “It always does.”

Not because it’s easy.
Not because it’s predictable.
But because of the extraordinary community that surrounds this museum — the staff, volunteers, artists, educators, partners, donors, and visitors who make the impossible feel possible every single day.

If we had only this community — this creativity, this courage, this willingness to show up and build something together — it would be enough.

Dayenu.

Warmly,

Dawn (who is currently running on caffeine and vibes)

Dawn LaRochelle
Executive Director