Jerusalem Museums

Every so often we try to hit up some of Jerusalem's museums, some well known "don't miss" museums, and some cute little hidden ones.

Israel Museum

Back in November we went to the Israel Museum. It's HUGE! It can't easily be done in one day, but we covered quite a bit. Our priority was to see the dead sea scrolls, so we did that first. Then we moved on to an exhibit about the Hasidic Jewish Culture. That was very interesting and enlightening. When we moved here, Skye and I knew basically nothing about Jewish culture and all the different branches, so it's nice to be learning about it. After that we made it through the archaeology section which was massive. Then we went through a temporary exhibit on sleep, which was cool, but also a little creepy. We hope to go back to finish the other sections before we leave, fine arts, Jewish art and life, and there is also a lot of modern art in the gardens. It's a really cool museum, worth the money. It's also only about a 20 minute walk from our apartment, so that's great! It was one of Obama's stops when he came to Israel.

50:1 scale model of Jerusalem circa 66 CE

Shrine of the book, where the dead sea scrolls are

Garden and path with modern art

Modern art...?

Archeology section

Archeology section

Archeology section

Whole room made of sponge in the sleep exhibit

David, Skye and me walking through a dark rainy creepy city.
No, just kidding, it was this cool scrolling image that our profiles were mirrored
onto in the sleep exhibit. Sort of like walking through a scary dream.

Ticho House and Museum of Psalms

Katherine and I decided to have another day exploring a place from our Hebrew book--The Ticho house. The Ticho House belonged to Avraham and Anna Ticho, both originally from Austria. Avraham was an eye doctor, and Anna was his assistant as well as an artist. Dr Ticho survived a stabbing during the 1929 Palestine riots, and died later in 1960. Anna Ticho died in 1980 and donated the whole house including its library, her art collection, and Dr. Ticho's Hanukah lamp collection (many patients gave these lamps from all over the world to Dr Ticho as gifts) to the city of Jerusalem. Now it's a cute little museum with a cafe and beautiful garden with very tall trees.

As we were leaving the Ticho House, we noticed a sign for the Museum of Psalms, we stepped into a little entry way with a VERY brightly painted ceiling. This lured us in so we decided to see what it was all about. Moshe Tzvi HaLevi Berger is the artist, and he painted an interpretation of each individual Psalm in the book of Psalms. It's amazing! He uses a certain color palette and each color has a specific significance. He also uses Hebrew letters that each have a deep meaning. It took him 15 years and now they're all on display here.

Katherine and I stepped in and began asking the attendant about the paintings. He was very nice and offered a lot of information. We looked around, fairly quickly, because it would take hours to examine each painting! Not that I'd be opposed to that but we had already spent a lot of time at the Ticho House. Anyways, as we were finishing up we were checking out the items for sale. One was a book about the artist and paintings. I thought the art was amazing! I loved all the meaning behind it, and loved that someone could make an image of the Psalms. As I contemplated buying the book, an older man had come in and was talking to us about the book and answering our questions. It was Moshe! He was just so amazing to me, so I decided to buy the book for myself as a birthday gift, which was coming up soon. He signed it for me! Not only that but they allowed me to go to the ATM with the book in hand since they didn't have a credit card machine. It was so nice! We came back and he let us take our picture with him. He even proposed, to both of us. He was so cute, and so sweet, it didn't even bother me when he wanted to talk about America's economy with us!

 So if you're in Jerusalem, or planning to visit here, I highly recommend stopping by this museum! It's free with a recommended 10 shekel donation. TOTALLY worth it!

Katherine at the Ticho House

I'm intently reading some of Dr. Ticho's letters

The entry way that lured us into the Museum of Psalms

Some of the 150 Psalm paintings 

Katherine and me with Moshe the artist!

Bible Lands Museum

One weekend, Skye and I tried out the Catholic mass at Notre Dame on Friday night. Because we did this, we had our whole Saturday free, which is when we normally go to church. We decided to check out the Bible Lands Museum, which happens to be right next to the Israel Museum.

The Bible Lands Museum is also quite large. It's basically thousands of artifacts and documents from ancient Near East. They had some cool displays, like the development of alphabets and Abraham's journey. They also had a picture of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon when Nebuchadnezzar II ruled. Sort of lame it was only a picture, right? Maybe, but it's ok because we've seen it! It's at the Pergamon in Berlin! It's always fun when we find these connections.

Did you ever wonder where the letter 'a' came from? 

Picture of the wall of Babylon....

....And then the real thing (picture from Berlin last year)!

Cool coffin

They had a temporary gold exhibit with tons of gold artifacts from all over the world.

Yad Vashem

We had been meaning to go to Yad Vashem since we first got here! It's Jerusalem's Holocaust Museum, and in February we finally made it. It's in a very pretty part of Jerusalem that we had never been to before. The museum is free and we decided against audio guides since most everything had explanations. Again, this museum is quite massive. The extremely intense part of the museum is closer to the end, so you sort of ease into the horror. On occasion Katherine and I had to do some quick walk throughs of sections because it was just too much to take in. The remembrance aspect of it is very good. There are many individual stories and interviews to learn about, which made it feel more personal rather than just historical, which is a good thing, but can be hard. I think it's always very impressive the way the architects make the design of the building itself part of the museum. The same was done at the Jewish museum in Berlin. Here is a description of the architecture of Yad Vashem straight from its website:

"Designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the new Holocaust History Museum is a prism-like triangular structure that penetrates the mountain from one side to the other, with both ends dramatically cantilevering into the open air. The triangular form of the structure was chosen to support the pressure of the earth above the prism while bringing in daylight from above through a 200 meter-long glass skylight. The skylight allows gleams of daylight to contrast with darker areas required for multimedia presentations. Within the galleries, light enters through localized skylights varying from diffused to clear glass, depending on the requirements of each exhibit.

The entire structure of the museum — floors, wall, interior and exterior — are reinforced concrete. Throughout the prism, the triangular cross-section varies, becoming narrower at the center. The warped surface formed by this variation, amplified by a gently sloping floor, creates a changing sequence of spaces and gives the illusion of descending deep into the mountain. As the route nears its northern exit, the floor begins to ascend and the triangle opens up again, with the exit bursting forth from the mountain’s slope to a dramatic view of modern-day Jerusalem."

The Hall of Names at the end is also a very powerful memorial. I'm going to be lame and copy and paste a description of this as well, the website and wikipedia can describe it better than me. So from wikipedia:

"The Hall of Names is a memorial to the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The main hall is composed of two cones: one ten meters high, with a reciprocal well-like cone excavated into the underground rock, its base filled with water. On the upper cone is a display featuring 600 photographs of Holocaust victims and fragments of Pages of Testimony. These are reflected in the water at the bottom of the lower cone, commemorating those victims whose names remain unknown. Surrounding the platform is the circular repository, housing the approximately 2.2 million Pages of Testimony collected to date, with empty spaces for those yet to be submitted. Since the 1950s, Yad Vashem has collected approximately 110,000 audio, video and written testimonies by Holocaust survivors. As the survivors age, the program has expanded to visiting survivors in their homes to tape interviews. Adjoining the hall is a study area with a computerized data bank where visitors can do online searches for the names of Holocaust victims."

Before exiting, we visited one last memorial, the children's memorial. This was no less intense than the rest, that was for sure. We entered and literally couldn't see anything but little lights that seemed to go on forever. We couldn't even see one foot in front of us, we had to use the railing to guide our way through. Not to mention, we went in together and it didn't take but a few second for us to lose the people we came in with. I imagine this was the idea. Again, here is the websites description of the memorial:

"This unique memorial, hollowed out from an underground cavern, is a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Memorial candles, a customary Jewish tradition to remember the dead, are reflected infinitely in a dark and somber space, creating the impression of millions of stars shining in the firmament. The names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin can be heard in the background."

Holocaust Museum from outside

View of the surrounding area

So far we're very impressed with Jerusalem's museums, and hope to visit more before we leave to return to the states.