The new core exhibition will expand the museum’s exploration of Jewish culture, identity and spirituality.
By HANNAH BROWNTHE MEGILLAH is conspicuous as much for its hiddenness as it is for its heroics.(photo credit: SUSSIE WEISS)Beit Hatfutsot: The Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv has launched a new series of videos giving a glimpse of a few of the key artifacts that will be featured in its much-anticipated new core exhibition, slated to open in fall 2020. The videos include a special introduction by Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, whose screen legend father Kirk Douglas first visited the museum in 1982 and was a longtime supporter of the museum.The new core exhibition will expand the museum’s exploration of Jewish culture, identity and spirituality. It will add 66,000 square feet of additional gallery space, featuring over 450 works from the collection and 800 images, as well as 40 film and multimedia displays and 22 interactive stations. It will also expand the museum’s digital presence, as Douglas explains in the videoThe museum will unveil two videos per week for four weeks, each one spotlighting a unique item that allows the institution to continue illuminating the Jewish story to the world. The first two videos in the series spotlight Nobel Prize winning novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer’s personal typewriter and a 16th century Sephardi Book of Esther megillah scroll.Chief curator Orit Shaham Gover presents Bashevis Singer’s Hebrew typewriter in the video, explaining how the author would write on the typewriter during visits to Israel to see his son. She also introduces a look at a 16th century “Book of Esther” scroll, which was traced from Spain to France to Morocco and was eventually brought to Israel in the 1960s.The museum is providing activities for students and families to take part in via its website during the novel coronavirus crisis.
