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PDF FormatThe Israel Museum’s disregard of the Jewish collective memory is so sweeping and consistent that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is also deliberate. This becomes all the more obvious when one looks at the other major museums in Israel, and discovers that everywhere, just as at the Israel Museum, the Jewish collective memory has been completely abandoned.
Take, for example, the Tel Aviv Museum. Dedicated exclusively to art, one might excuse it from presenting historical exhibits. Yet even within the limitations imposed by its focus on art, this museum rejects any narrative that might convey a national context. Its position seems to be that the importance of Jewish artists stems only from their place in the general art world, or their role in the local Israeli art scene, but never within a narrative connecting, for example, Chagall, Agam and Danziger as Jewish artists whose works reflect the story of Jewish art. At the Tel Aviv Museum, no such story exists—a viewpoint assumed at the Ramat Gan and Kfar Saba museums, and other art galleries, as well. This is not meant to diminish these museums’ value as showcases for outstanding works of the graphic and plastic arts; the point is that nowhere in Israel can one find the pantheon of Jewish artists represented within the larger historical context of Jewish art, to say nothing of the Jewish spiritual experience as a whole.
At the Land of Israel Museum in Ramat Aviv one encounters a different form of aversion to the narrative of the Jewish people. In this museum’s extensive displays of original historical articles and archeological finds, transitions are based not on chronology but on broad categories of human activity—spheres of daily life, agriculture and so forth. Moreover, the Land of Israel Museum focuses far more upon the “Land” than upon “Israel”: Essentially taking a territorial focus that brings to mind Israel’s “Canaanite” movement in art and culture, the museum is virtually devoid of any essential connection with the Jewish people. Even in those few instances when the museum hosts an exhibit of national significance, it carefully downplays that aspect. For example, coins from the Bar Kochba era are presented in the same exhibit as ancient coins from Thailand, rather than with Hebrew letters and scrolls from the time of the revolt. Perhaps the most blatant case of the curators’ disdain for the Jewish national story is the display of ancient Tora scrolls at the entrance to an exhibit entitled, simply, “Folklore.”
Only two major museums in Israel place the Jewish people at center stage: Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and the Diaspora Museum at Tel Aviv University. Yet these are not historical museums in any real sense of the word. Yad Vashem concentrates on an extremely narrow period in Jewish history; and the Diaspora Museum explicitly avoids presenting a chronological narrative of the nation’s history: “The Diaspora Museum does not tell the history of the Jewish people in exile according to the sequence of historical periods,” announces a sign at the entrance, “but rather according to subjects: Family, community, belief….”—a description reminiscent of the Land of Israel Museum, or the Israel Museum’s Judaica wing. Moreover, the Diaspora Museum emphasizes education by way of elaborate models and the staged reconstruction of events rather than by the use of original artifacts. Its time frame is also constricted: By definition its narrative is limited to the centuries of Jewish exile; in fact, about eighty percent of the museum’s exhibits concern the last few centuries only. The Diaspora Museum cannot, and does not even pretend to, play the role of a national museum offering a comprehensive account of over three millennia of Jewish history.
A distant relative of the historical museums is the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem’s Old City. Here, the museum grounds (the Tower of David itself and the park which surrounds it) are the only original artifacts. The rest of the museum is no more than a visitors’ center which, like the Diaspora Museum, employs models and audiovisual displays to describe the history of Jerusalem—and only Jerusalem. This museum, too, skirts the fundamental Jewish narrative, asserting in no uncertain terms the equal importance of Jerusalem to all three monotheistic religions. The result is that equal weight is accorded to the period of Solomon’s rule, when Jerusalem was a major international center, and the Mameluke period, when the city’s significance in regional affairs was marginal at best.
At the archeological museums, the narrative of the chief exhibits is always chronological. Yet this chronology, as a rule, is not that of the Jewish people but something in the best tradition of the British Archeological Society. At the Rockefeller Museum of Jerusalem, for example, the official chronology completely sidesteps the period of the Israelites, designating the First Temple period as the “Iron Age” and the Second Temple period the “Persian and Hellenistic Era.” Conspicuously, all other historical periods are defined according to whoever ruled the land of Israel at the time, from the Canaanite period to the Islamic or Crusader period. Perhaps this indifference (underscored by the sign at the entrance reading “State of Palestine” and the display of Hasmonean coins under the heading “Coins of Palestine”) is an unfortunate legacy of the British Mandate. But what is one to make of the fact that the Lachish letters—among the most important ancient Hebrew artifacts in the world—are thrown together in a single display case with a pile of jewelry, weights and axes of the same period? What message does this setting convey about their value? And this is only one of many examples of the museum’s systematic rejection of the historical-national meaning of the artifacts it exhibits. A forgettable, not to mention neglected, museum, the Rockefeller nevertheless houses many of our most treasured national assets. That their surroundings and presentation are so much less than they deserve is simply an affront to the Jewish heritage they represent.
The Bible Lands Museum adjacent to the Israel Museum also falls short. Visually stunning, it manages to combine in extraordinary fashion authentic pieces together with illustrative models. Yet the museum’s aim is not to present the Jewish narrative but to enrich the biblical narrative (with which it presumes visitors are already quite familiar) by offering a broader archeological and historical context. The result is a connection to the Bible that is purely associative: For example, a verse from Ecclesiastes, “There is a season for everything, a time for every purpose under heaven,” is juxtaposed with findings concerning the worship of time in Larasa a thousand years before Ecclesiastes was written. Here, it is as though the biblical narrative is but a device for teaching visitors about archeology, rather than the other way around.
One exception which might have proved the rule is the Hecht Museum at Haifa University. Although small in size and secondary in importance, this museum is faithful to a basic historical logic in its chronological presentation of exhibits, dividing them into periods such as the “Mishnaic and Talmudic Period.” Yet the Hecht Museum also confines itself to chronicling Jewish settlement within the boundaries of the land of Israel alone, and its location and limited scale preclude its ever filling the need for a national Jewish museum.
Perhaps the most appalling consequence of the loss of Jewish memory in Israel’s museums is that in numerous instances items of the utmost importance end up falling between the categorical cracks, not really Wtting into any of the museums’ currently featured story lines, and in some cases becoming completely lost. A few years ago, the remnants of an entire ship from the Second Temple period, astonishingly well preserved, were discovered near Ginosar in the north. From a historical point of view, this was one of the most important discoveries ever with respect to the Jewish settlement in the Galilee. Instead of relating to this ship as a national asset which belongs in a Jewish national museum, the state of Israel turned it into a tourist attraction—shamelessly dubbing it “the Jesus Boat.” Without batting an eye, the government decided to lend the ship to the Pope in honor of the year 2000, when it will join countless other Jewish pieces from the same period in the Vatican’s collection.
How does it happen that we simply transfer one of our national treasures into foreign hands? Does it have anything to do with the fact that no organized presentation of the Jewish settlement in the Galilee is maintained in the Israel Museum or any other museum in Israel; that, in effect, we have nowhere to put the ancient ship? The inevitable conclusion is that when museums adopt a narrative stance divorced from the Jewish historical narrative, even objects of the greatest historical-national value lose their importance in the eyes of museum curators and archivists. Where would we display an original copy of the decree of expulsion of the Jews from Spain, or the spicebox of the Ba’al Shem Tov? If we were suddenly to come across King Solomon’s crown—would we have any idea where to put it?
The rejection of the story of the Jews by Israel’s curators might have been written off to incompetence or indifference. Yet this is a virtually unanimous rejection, a policy adopted by the curators of Israel’s museums, somewhere along the line, that the story of the Jews is somehow not that important. Nor can one maintain that the Jewish narrative is too grand, its demands too high, to bring under a single roof: While other museums successfully claim millions of years of the evolution of species, or the entirety of mankind’s scientific endeavor, as their founding narrative, Israel’s museums have not seen fit to organize the wealth of her treasures into what ought to be a fairly straightforward, chronologically based presentation of the Jewish people’s fantastic—yet by no means indescribable—odyssey.
The establishment of a Jewish National Museum, whether within the framework of the Israel Museum or as a separate institution, is a fundamental need of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Obviously, such an undertaking would involve a monumental series of decisions and details, yet a few basic principles can be outlined regarding its purpose and design: The Jewish National Museum should undertake to recount, in one overarching chronological narrative, the saga of the Jewish people from its initial appearance on the stage of history to the present day; it should display the wealth of original pieces that convey an understanding of the life and works of the Jewish people, regardless of type, period or location; it should express the intensity of the life force of the Jewish people across the generations, their bond to the land of Israel, and the significance of their contributions to world culture. A museum of this type would for the first time provide a permanent setting for the most important objects and artifacts that tell the story of the people through the ages, serving as a solid cultural foundation for Israeli society while reinforcing individual and national identity. Other nations have built museums of this type in order to strengthen their citizens’ knowledge of their heritage and identification with their homeland. Is this not a goal of fundamental importance to the Jewish people as well?
Ethan Dor-Shav is a senior copywriter at the advertising agency of Baumann Ber Rivnay in Tel Aviv.
