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With an updated branding, the Jewish Folk Museum wants to rewrite our story - Walla! culture

2021-03-10T14:25:23.897Z


Beit Hatfutsot changed its face and name. It is now called "We", and on its banner is engraved a change in the narrative of Jewish history: no longer "from pogrom to pogrom" - but a story of international success, influence and prosperity, multifocal and especially multicolored, in which every Jew should find himself


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With an updated branding, the Jewish People Museum wants to rewrite our story

Beit Hatfutsot changed its face and name.

It is now called "We", and on its banner is engraved a change in the narrative of Jewish history: no longer "from pogrom to pogrom" - but a story of international success, influence and prosperity, multifocal and especially multicolored, in which every Jew should find himself

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  • We - The Museum of the Jewish People

Nadav Menuhin

Wednesday, March 10, 2021, 4:11 p.m.

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Letter of rights received by Avraham ben Tolila from Napoleon III in 1865. We - The Jewish People's Museum (Photo: Shahar and Ziv Katz)

The Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv was relaunched this morning (Wednesday) with a new permanent exhibition, following an extensive and lengthy renovation, which included ten years of planning and four years of construction.

The institution, known as Beit Hatfutsot, is rebranded under the name "We".

More than a marketing decision, it is a statement: "We" is "all of us", and the ambition is that the huge building - located on the grounds of Tel Aviv University - will attract Jews from all over the world, and that every Jew will find himself in it.



The separation from the iconic name, the museum says, was not received lightly, and was reduced from an initial list of about 70 other names.

Beit Hatfutsot was opened to the public in 1978, when the need to preserve the memory of Jewish communities that had been destroyed a few decades earlier hovered.

More than 40 years later - the Jewish discourse demands other words.

"The word Diaspora does not express the contemporary discourse, it is the word that distances," says the museum's VP of marketing, Amir Schwartz. "We were looking for a name that would express the new values ​​of the home, inclusivity and pluralism, and that's how we got there."

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An installation of the wisdom of the generations.

We - The Jewish People's Museum (Photo: Shahar and Ziv Katz)

"We want people to come here and find themselves. Everyone who comes will tell - this story is mine too," says the museum's chief curator, Dr. Orit Shaham-Gover. However, inclusivity is not necessarily an obvious choice, even in less divided societies. In order to create a common narrative, a respectable place must be provided for a variety of groups, voices, and genders - which the old narrative has left at most a place in the margins of the story, if at all.The new museum bravely tackles these issues, engraved on the bridal banner of the Jewish groups: Alongside dissenters, Ashkenazis alongside Mizrahis alongside originals of all kinds, secular alongside religious from all streams, women alongside men and so on. The rationale is clear, like that song from "Casablanca": We are all Jews, and so nice. , But also a value-based and optimistic reading about the present and future of this collective.



The second significant turnaround is the change in the narrative of Jewish history: no longer "from pogrom to pogrom" and certainly not the Zionist version that stretches "from the Bible to Palmach" - but a success story, influence and international prosperity , Multi-focus and multi-hued. Dr. Shaham-Guber describes a waiver of the victim's narrative, or in her words that

La, "In the balance between life and death - we have chosen life."

More than 70 years after the Holocaust, when an existential antisemitic threat no longer hovers over the Jewish people, a different story can be told.

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Exhibition of Jewish travels.

We - The Jewish People's Museum (Photo: Shahar and Ziv Katz)

The happy Jewish story

This story will be accessible to the public from Klausner Street.

From the entrance to the campus, which is relatively empty due to the corona plague, a short minute walk alongside a construction site in the making of a new nanotechnology center will lead to the new-old building.

The permanent exhibition includes three floors, each of which focuses on a different level of interest.



The top floor deals, as the chief curator Dr. Orit Shaham-Gover says, at the end of the story: Jewish identity and culture today. Accordingly, it emphasizes the new principles of the museum: prosperity on the one hand and inclusivity on the other. The exhibition opens with photographs of Jewish families and monologues Of contemporary Jews - of all types and genders, including mixed families and LGBT figures, and not far from them is an overview of the many types of Jewish streams for their types.

However, the heart of the floor emphasizes the cultural achievements of the Jewish people in a variety of fields - from dance to cinema, literature to theater, art to music (the brothers' jazz to Kuwaiti, Leonard Cohen's guitar) and also - Jewish food, of course.

The emphasis is on diversity - East and West, without a hierarchy, and there is a recurring illustration that even if the canonical story tends to forget them, women are always an integral part of it.

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Leonard Cohen's guitar.

We - The Jewish People's Museum (Photo: Shahar and Ziv Katz)

The second floor is the floor of Jewish history, which begins with our ancestor Abraham and ends with modern Jewish communities, some of them virtual.

The sequence here is chronological, but will not threaten anyone who has suffered from history lessons: through large images, sound, interactive games, original films and even "classic" exhibits, visitors will be able to make it all the way from Light as Demons to 2021, without getting tired of reading hard (there are also texts , Of course, for more investors).

As much as possible, it's a happy narrative: no longer a history of persecution - but a creation, a full fabric of life and development, from India to North America.



Only one enclosed room, whose walls are black, is dedicated to the Holocaust.

On one wall is Baina Heller's "My Sister", on another wall is "This is a Man," in the middle of the picture of the Jewish boy raising his hands and in Mahler's fifth background.

This is a modest, minimalist room in relation to the museum, which does not pretend to encompass all the gravity of the event, and yet emphasize its severity as it deviates from the general trajectory.

And yet, it is separate from the rest, in terms of concept and space: the perception of Jewish history as a cultural celebration is — is the central experience of the floor.



The lower floor deals with several basic concepts: the Sabbath, the calendar and the Jewish life cycle, and of course the Bible - and their interaction with world culture. This floor is the most modest in the exhibition, and leads to its end.

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New Age Square.

We - The Jewish People's Museum (Photo: Shahar and Ziv Katz)

The only dissonance

In order to invite the public to the museum, one must speak in an inviting language, and accordingly this Jewish Disneyland includes a variety of interactions. The images, on purpose, are very large and colorful, and the space is rich but not laden with text. Want to say: As a critic, you are not drowning in Jewish history, but enjoying its tasting menu. The spirit of celebration permeates the exhibition also through sounds that are present in many wings of the museum - a space that usually imposes silence on visitors even this time treating noise as an integral part of it.



Perhaps most of all, the most intriguing choice of “we” designers is their intense use of contemporary artists - directors, musicians, illustrators, etc. - to imagine and illustrate historical figures and events. Thus, works by the illustrator Assaf Hanukkah, the director Adam Sanderson, the musician Neta Mualem, and the artist Nir Peled (Pilfeld), for example, serve as part of the historical exhibition. But this is not just an illustration, but an exciting choice: the whole purpose of the museum is to make this story meaningful to contemporary visitors, and to make them feel a part of it. By this act, which is intensely present throughout the exhibition, the museum revives it and its protagonists.



The only dissonance, it seems, is between the experience of transcendence presented in the exhibition and general life. The Museum of the Jewish People presents us at its best, diverse, successful, pluralistic, liberal, and above all - equal partners. On the street, outside, on election days and on weekdays, Jews will continue to quarrel with each other over everything and anything. That, too, is probably part of the story.

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Source: walla

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