Philly’s Jewish History Museum is selling bundled-up Bernie mugs and T-shirts

The pose that launched a thousand memes is now available online as a T-shirt or mug from Philly’s own National Museum of American Jewish History, which is cashing in on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bundled-up Inauguration Day look just as half the internet is begging the other half to stop posting it.

Sanders, a Brooklyn native who since 1968 has lived in Vermont, where people know how to dress for January, might recommend adding a parka over that museum T-shirt. And mittens, of course.

It’s not the first time the museum, which has been closed since March because of the pandemic, has capitalized on a pop-culture moment. Though it might be the first time it’s used a democratic socialist to do it.

Last summer, after then-President Donald Trump’s mispronunciation of Yosemite National Park as “Yo Semites,” Kristen Kreider, the museum’s retail director, saw an opportunity to move some of the “Yo Semite” T-shirts the gift shop had been selling since 2011, and to order even more from a local printing company. About 6,000 were sold within the first few days, and they’re still selling. “I haven’t checked recently, but we’re over 11,000,” Kreider said Friday.

» READ MORE: Could gift-shop sales be Philly museums' last best hope for a revenue bump this year?

The museum’s online gift shop also carries a “Mamala Harris” T-shirt, a reference to the Yiddish-adjacent nickname Vice President Kamala Harris was reportedly given by her stepchildren with husband Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish. It went on sale the day after the election, and is selling well, Kreider said.

As for Sanders, “If he weren’t Jewish, we wouldn’t be featuring this,” she said. “We have a vendor already who sells Jewish T-shirts. He was smart enough to email us yesterday morning with images. ... He already got his first batch of orders emailed from us this morning and he’s working on those. He is also sending us an order for the store, because a lot of local people want to do pickup. It’s better for the environment, and it’s nice to have a little safe contact with people.” Store pickup is an option at checkout online, or you can call the shop at 215-923-0262 to arrange that.

Had she thought about carrying mittens?

“Yes! Our CEO wanted to get right on that,” Kreider said, but the kind of mittens Sanders was wearing — and has reportedly been wearing for years — aren’t easy to come by. As their maker, a second-grade teacher named Jen Ellis, of Essex Junction, Vt., told Slate this week, “They’re not knitted, they’re sewn from repurposed and upcycled sweaters,” and she’s no longer making them for sale.

The museum’s gift shop business has been a saving grace this past year.

“We had our best year in 2019, and we blew that away the last six months of 2020″ because of things like the sales of the “Yo Semite” shirts, Kreider said. “Right when that was starting to get manageable ... we lost our beloved RBG [Ruth Bader Ginsburg]” and demand for items related to the late Supreme Court justice skyrocketed. The online store’s “RBG Collection,” which has been part of the store for the past four years, includes necklaces modeled after Ginsburg’s trademark lace collars, jigsaw puzzles, holiday cards, and, of course, a face mask.

“Even Passover last year was really great. We had a captive audience,” Kreider said, of people who wouldn’t be going to relatives’ houses for Seder and would instead need their own Seder plates and Haggadahs for the Seder.”