On my third day in Jerusalem, ever eager to take in more history, I set off to visit two exceptional museums: Yad Vashem & the Israel Museum.
Located amid a forest on the outskirts of the city, Yad Vashem is an incredibly moving memorial to the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The amazing artifacts, archival footage and audio visual displays combine to overwhelm visitors with evidence that humans are capable of almost unimaginable horrors. The Children's Memorial, with its single candle light refracted through mirrors in a dark room so that its image is projected millions of times to represent the young lives lost in the Holocaust, was particularly moving.
Though I learnt a lot at Yad Vashem, and firmly believe that humanity as a whole would benefit if every person on the planet visited the museum, there was one aspect of the site that unnerved me slightly. The Holocaust museum is arranged in such a way that you weave your way down a literal timeline towards a decked exit that overlooks the forest. The displays at the end of the journey, documenting the zionists struggles to establish a Jewish state at the end of World War II, combined with the architectural design all communicate a very persuasive narrative. Namely that you the visitors, like the Jewish people, have gone through the darkness to the light. That the only way to begin to redress the terrible, terrible wrongs done to the Jewish people was to give them the state of Israel.
After spending more than three hours vividly reliving the horrors of the Holocaust I'm sure that most visitors to Yad Vashem come to that deck and think "Yeah, you know what - they earnt this land. The least the world could do after all they suffered was to give the 'chosen people' a country of their own". That would have been all well and good had the land been empty. But Palestine was not empty at the end of World War II. As I stood on that deck looking across the tree tops of Israel I couldn't help wondering if the world might take a different view of troubles in the region if the Palestinians had their own memorial museum.
The collections on show at the Israel Museum are so extensive that you could easily spend a week exploring the museum's archeological displays, Jewish cultural displays, art galleries and sculpture gardens. Having said that, there was no way that I was going to fork over the hefty entry fee more than once so I instead tried to take in all that I could in one 4 hour marathon session.
The information and artifacts on offer in the archeological section comprehensively cover the most recent 5000 years of Israel's history, not to mention three floors of the museum, and were a tad overwhelming for someone like me whose formal education in history ended in year eight of high school.
An exhibition in the modern art gallery that I found particularly evocative was called 'Sands of Time'. The artist, Micha Ullman, had covered much of the gallery floor with sand and various sculptures and formations appeared to break through the desert sands to emerge on the surface. After three hours of intense cultural immersion it was a relief to wander through the stunning sculpture gardens on my way to the museum's main attraction.
For a book nerd like myself, a display called the 'Shrine of the Book' is a natural drawcard. The external design of the shrine is architecturally magnificent and appropriately symbolic for the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. Honestly the only way I could have enjoyed the shrine more would be if they added a wing focusing on 'Libraries Through the Ages' with a special section on the history of the sliding ladder.
After spending the day wading through Israel's history it felt good to take in a bit of modern day Israel in front of the Damascus Gate at sunset. As the temperature cools in the early evening, shopkeepers pack up for the day while families and friends take in the fresh air before heading home for dinner. Orthodox jews, catholic nuns and devout muslims mingle as they head out of the old city, carefully negotiating their way through the multiple soccer games that are underway on the stone terraces that stand between the Damascus Gate and greater Jerusalem. Local arabic boys fly kites overhead and the scene would be quite idyllic if the kites weren't in the shape of fighter jets and weren't covered in camouflage print nylon. Still I can't help thinking that as long as Palestinian teenagers are still able to fly their kites over Jerusalem there is still some hope for peaceful cohabitation in this troubled country.
Located amid a forest on the outskirts of the city, Yad Vashem is an incredibly moving memorial to the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The amazing artifacts, archival footage and audio visual displays combine to overwhelm visitors with evidence that humans are capable of almost unimaginable horrors. The Children's Memorial, with its single candle light refracted through mirrors in a dark room so that its image is projected millions of times to represent the young lives lost in the Holocaust, was particularly moving.
Though I learnt a lot at Yad Vashem, and firmly believe that humanity as a whole would benefit if every person on the planet visited the museum, there was one aspect of the site that unnerved me slightly. The Holocaust museum is arranged in such a way that you weave your way down a literal timeline towards a decked exit that overlooks the forest. The displays at the end of the journey, documenting the zionists struggles to establish a Jewish state at the end of World War II, combined with the architectural design all communicate a very persuasive narrative. Namely that you the visitors, like the Jewish people, have gone through the darkness to the light. That the only way to begin to redress the terrible, terrible wrongs done to the Jewish people was to give them the state of Israel.
After spending more than three hours vividly reliving the horrors of the Holocaust I'm sure that most visitors to Yad Vashem come to that deck and think "Yeah, you know what - they earnt this land. The least the world could do after all they suffered was to give the 'chosen people' a country of their own". That would have been all well and good had the land been empty. But Palestine was not empty at the end of World War II. As I stood on that deck looking across the tree tops of Israel I couldn't help wondering if the world might take a different view of troubles in the region if the Palestinians had their own memorial museum.
The collections on show at the Israel Museum are so extensive that you could easily spend a week exploring the museum's archeological displays, Jewish cultural displays, art galleries and sculpture gardens. Having said that, there was no way that I was going to fork over the hefty entry fee more than once so I instead tried to take in all that I could in one 4 hour marathon session.
The information and artifacts on offer in the archeological section comprehensively cover the most recent 5000 years of Israel's history, not to mention three floors of the museum, and were a tad overwhelming for someone like me whose formal education in history ended in year eight of high school.
An exhibition in the modern art gallery that I found particularly evocative was called 'Sands of Time'. The artist, Micha Ullman, had covered much of the gallery floor with sand and various sculptures and formations appeared to break through the desert sands to emerge on the surface. After three hours of intense cultural immersion it was a relief to wander through the stunning sculpture gardens on my way to the museum's main attraction.
For a book nerd like myself, a display called the 'Shrine of the Book' is a natural drawcard. The external design of the shrine is architecturally magnificent and appropriately symbolic for the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. Honestly the only way I could have enjoyed the shrine more would be if they added a wing focusing on 'Libraries Through the Ages' with a special section on the history of the sliding ladder.
After spending the day wading through Israel's history it felt good to take in a bit of modern day Israel in front of the Damascus Gate at sunset. As the temperature cools in the early evening, shopkeepers pack up for the day while families and friends take in the fresh air before heading home for dinner. Orthodox jews, catholic nuns and devout muslims mingle as they head out of the old city, carefully negotiating their way through the multiple soccer games that are underway on the stone terraces that stand between the Damascus Gate and greater Jerusalem. Local arabic boys fly kites overhead and the scene would be quite idyllic if the kites weren't in the shape of fighter jets and weren't covered in camouflage print nylon. Still I can't help thinking that as long as Palestinian teenagers are still able to fly their kites over Jerusalem there is still some hope for peaceful cohabitation in this troubled country.
No comments:
Post a Comment