“If we erase all the cholera, who will we stay with?”

This week, “We” was launched, the new Jewish museum, which replaced Beit Hatfutsot at Tel Aviv University. 7,000 sqm of spectacular display next to represent using advanced technology 120 years of Jewish history and culture. It seems that ten years of work on the new content with an investment of one hundred million dollars, led by Dr. Orit Shaham-Gover, the chief curator, and Medi Shavid, the director of the museum’s renewal and another group of talented people, have created a museum that meets all political requirements. Representation for all types of families and all identities – a couple of men and a child, a Korean guy married to a Jewish woman, an Ethiopian with a settler and an orthodox lesbian rabbi who also sang.

The project places great emphasis on women. “This is one of our corrections,” says Shaham-Gover. “We forcibly removed from women’s research some of which had an impact at the time only it was erased, and we brought them back on stage.”

But it was not just women who were corrected. Every Jewish woman and Jew from every country of origin has representation. “We are telling a story that is not only of Jews from Western culture but also of North Africa, Yemen and India,” says Shaham-Gover. “If you had asked me ten years ago who these people are, I have never heard of them in my life and I am a pretty educated person.”

There is no contemporary issue that the curators of the renovated museum have not thought of – including the burning issue: what to do with all the talented creators who have been revealed as criminals in recent years, following the #Metoo revolution. “I have a clear separation between the creator and the work,” she says. ‘Woody Allen is here and so is Roman Polanski. We conducted research on close to 1,000 top Jews in their field.

If I had erased from there all the abusers of all kinds, beating their wives, all the culprits, we would have been left with very little. Human culture until the beginning of the 21st century took for granted all this disgust. what should we do?”.

Maybe not give them a place in history?

“Why? In difficult cases, such as the case of Roman Polanski, who is with us in a display of influential Jews, I wrote ‘he was accused of this and that’. After all, most of them were not tried at all. ‘

Take, for example, the photographer Simcha Shirman, whose investigation recently accused him of sexual assault and harassment was published in “The Hottest Place in Hell.” Would you show his works?

‘In general, I think if we erase the creation of all men with power, it will be called Cancel Culture, and then we will be left with very little Culture. One should be aware that men throughout history have exploited their power and abused it, we write this, but to take them out? – Stay with very little. It’s sad but it’s the situation. ‘

In recent years, Jewish museums around the world have been dealing with the question of their role. “Some of them have become Holocaust museums,” says Shaham-Gover, “and there are those who have fled the struggle and declared themselves art museums. We took it upon ourselves to tell the whole story of the Jewish people. ”

How is the new concept different from the old one?

“At the Beit Hatfutsot Museum, the representative of the Jew was an Orthodox Ashkenazi man, and history was a history of atrocities, riots, decrees and destruction. Our concept is reversed. Because in Jewish life alongside death there is also flourishing and prosperity and creativity and cultural dialogue, and that is what we have chosen to show. “The Holocaust, for example, is presented through one work by Gustav Metzger, which includes the famous photograph of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto and a pile of broken bricks.

“We also changed the Zionist message that the problem of the Jews was solved because there is the State of Israel. Our perception is that the Jewish people are scattered everywhere – this is why we changed the name of the museum to ‘we’ – and we tell the story of the whole nation from a position of equality and not a position that presents Israel as the right place and everything else is on the way here. This is in contrast to the perception of those who founded the place: Abba Kovner, Shaike Weinberg and Eli Ben Gal, who were left-wing, even relatively extremist, but held the view that the dead exile was outdated and that Israel was the solution. “

Sounds revolutionary. Were there any arguments?

“No, the issues that are hotly debated were presented to the content committee, which included representatives of the donors, such as how the State of Israel is presented or how women are presented (in this context it is a bit disappointing to find that there are only two women out of eight committee members). The dilemmas were about who would come in and not whether they would come in. ‘

No fear of reactions from conservative audiences?

“No. We believe the public is far less conservative than the organized establishment, the Ministry of Education and the schools, make of it.”

Another fundamental change in the museum is the establishment of an art collection. Shaham-Gover says: “I came and said ‘I want exhibits,’ I convinced the board that this was their idea, and when Dan Tadmor CEO and Irina Nevzlin, the chairman of the board and the daughter of Leonid Nevzlin, one of the donors, took office, the exhibits became something not to be argued. Madi Shavid adds: “Because I understand the meaning of a collection, one of the things I did was build two acclimatized warehouses” and the curators were sent to look. “We were not looking for the Jewish Mona Lisa but things with a story,” Shaham-Gover describes: , Historical objects, costumes and scripts of Jewish artists.

Thus, in the last four years, 600 exhibits have been purchased for NIS 5 million, including the original script for “2001: An Odyssey in Space” by Stanley Kubrick (about $ 1,000), the original doll from Steven Spielberg’s “ET” which cost $ 2,500 and the expensive exhibit Most on display: An outfit designed by Leon Backst and cost $ 30,000. This does not include the $ 7 million art collection that Leonid Nevzlin, one of the main donors, purchased for himself, at the museum’s request, so that he could lend the works for display. The works were selected by the curator Ami Barak, and include, among others, works by Diane Arbus, Haim Soutin, as well as Pavel Wahlberg, Yossi Berger and Dor Gaz. “

In addition, the museum chose to commission works by local artists, including Doina Feinberg Zaguri who photographed the family series, Lena Rabenko, who illustrated places where the Jews lived Peleg Dishon, who made a beautiful object and Hadassah Goldwicht, who presents a video work based on fetal photographs she carried in her womb. Each of them, Shavid notes, received a fair artist’s salary, and this too can be noted as a reversal.

You could already read complaints on Facebook (from people who had not visited) about the new name, which conveys strenuous flattery and a fake, trendy and catchy collective. So yes, the museum is also a kind of product that should compete for the hearts of the public, but there is no doubt that it has a sincere desire to correct injustices and give expression to muted and diverse voices from the past, and from the present.