From the late Queen Salome to the RBG, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, the revamped Tel Aviv museum of the Jews strives for the ambitious promise of bringing nearly 3,000 years of history and Jewish tradition under one roof.
The museum – formerly known as Beit Hatfutsot and dubbed ANU, Hebrew for “We” – reopened to visitors this week after more than a decade of $ 100 million refurbishment.
Its exhibition space has tripled, making it the largest Jewish museum in the world, officials say. Its old galleries with dioramas and models from the time it first opened in 1978 have provided progressive displays with interactive touch screens and original artwork.
Nearly a third of the renovation was funded by the Russian-Israeli oil expert Nadid de Leonid Nevzlin Foundation. Another $ 52 million came from philanthropists and other U.S.-based foundations, and $ 18 million from the Israeli government. Irina, daughter of Nevzlin, wife of Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, chairs the museum’s board of directors.
The refurbished museum is using a new approach to telling the Jewish story, said chief curator Orit Shaham-Govern. It focuses on the diversity of Jewish culture and the achievements of the Jewish people, not just its tragedies, she said.
“Everyone who walks in here has to see for themselves regardless of gender, name, ethnic background,” said Dan Tadmor, Head of the museum. our story and you have to feel part of it. “
Scattered through 72,000 square feet (6,690 square meters) of galleries are historical artifacts and memorabilia: a jawza – a type of stringed instrument – associated with 20th-century Iraqi musicians known as the Al- Kuwaity, one of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s signature collars, a scroll of the Book of Esther from pre-Inquisition Spain, and a monumental carved stone from a first-century AD synagogue on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
The main attraction is the original artwork that illuminates lesser-known historical figures such as Ottoman Jewish philanthropist Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi and the famous Ethiopian warrior queen Yodit.
Visitors can use a digital bracelet to capture memorable elements – from literary values, to recipes and family trees – and take them home by email.
Shaham-Govern, the curator, said the outdoor gallery is open as a “celebration of life and culture and lighting and colors.”
“The museum is not a sound temple,” she said. “It’s about life.” So you come here, you have sounds, you have light and colors. It’s part of you. “
Its grand opening comes as the fundamental question of who the Jews are has reappeared in Israeli politics ahead of the fourth parliamentary election this month in two years.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that people who had undergone reforms and retention changes to Judaism in Israel would be eligible to be involved when applying for citizenship under the Israeli Return Law .
The decision has gone beyond the powerful ultra-rectangular religious establishment of Israel, which has long been in control of change, along with members of the ruling Likud party.
Upon entering the main gallery, visitors come across life-size projections of evolution from a kaleidoscope of different uses and lifestyles – from Reconstruction to ultra-accurate- square and everything in between – explaining how they define the Jewish identity.
Anat Lieberman, a museum visitor from the town of Ramat Gan, said a display of people from “all the colors of the rainbow” was moving, showing that it was a museum “for him all the Jews. “
Tadmor avoided courting the politics of the case and demanded that the institution not stand on the question of who is Jewish.
“We are apolitical. We do not favor any name. We are floating 20,000 feet above all that, ”he said. “We just want to make sure everyone is represented and that you don’t come out feeling like ‘I’m obvious.'”