The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

| Woman with a Camera
Liselotte Grschebina, Germany 1908 - Israel 1994 read more > > >

Place: Ticho House

| The Israel Museum Ben-Yitzhak Award for the Illustration of a Children's Book, 2008
Original works from books that earned their
illustrators an award: David Polonsky (Gold
Medal); Batia Kolton (Silver Medal); Lena
Guberman, Yana Bukler, Ofra Amit, and Yaniv
Shimony (honorable mentions)

Place: Ruth Youth Wing Library

| Matters of Eternity
An intimate display of highlights from the Museum’s Archaeology Wing evokes subjects that lay at the heart of the ancient world: religious faith and ritual, divine law, gods and earthly rulers, the powerful cycle of
nature and concern for the world to come – all regarded as matters of
eternity. These important objects include: the fragment from a 9th century BCE Aramean monument that mentions the House of David; a
Roman sculpture of the goddess Kore, whose annual return from the
underworld heralded the coming of spring and the rebirth of nature;
and a 5th-century CE mosaic floor adorned with Jewish symbols of
redemption.

Place: Ruth Youth Wing

| Model of Jerusalem in the Late Second Temple Period
In the year 66 CE, the Great Revolt against the Romans erupted, resulting in the destruction of the city and the Temple. The ancient city was then at its largest, covering an area of approximately 445 acres. The model thus reflects ancient Jerusalem at its peak. Built at the initiative of Hans Kroch, owner of the Holyland Hotel, in memory of his son Jacob, who fell in Israel's War of Independence, the model opened to the public in the early 1960s on the premises of the hotel, and has now been relocated to the Israel Museum.
Three main sources were used to reconstruct the appearance of the city: writings from the Roman period, ancient cities similar to Jerusalem, and archaeological discoveries from Jerusalem itself. Extensive excavations in Jerusalem have greatly enhanced our understanding of the ancient city and enabled us to update the model, and it is expected that such work will continue in the future.

Place: Shrine of the Book campus

| A Wandering Bible: The Aleppo Codex
The amazing story of the Aleppo Codex, the most authoritative manuscript of the Masoretic text of the Bible, which was written in Tiberias in the 10th century, preserved by the Jewish community of Aleppo from the 14th century on, and brought to Israel in the 1950s. The Codex is accompanied by rare biblical manuscripts from the Late Second Temple Period and the Middle Ages and by related Jewish and Muslim objects. Shrine of the Book, Lower Level

Place: The Shrine of the Book

Special Exhibits

| Song of the Sea: An Unknown Scroll Fragment from the 8th Century
On view for the first time!

A rare Torah manuscript from "the silent period" – some 500 years, between the 3rd and 8th centuries, from which almost no Hebrew biblical manuscripts have been found. Apparently written in Egypt, this fragment of a Torah scroll contains a section of the book of Exodus, including one of the earliest and most beautiful examples of biblical poetry, the Song of the Sea. The text of the manuscript is strikingly similar to the traditional Masoretic version familiar from later Bible codices (dating from the 9th century on). It constitutes a link between these medieval manuscripts and more ancient texts from the late Second Temple period, found in the Judean Desert. This special exhibit is on loan courtesy of the Rare Book Department at Duke University, North Carolina.

Place: The Shrine of the Book