Monday 09-06 - Israel Museum

Today was the first day of shavuot. So a religious holiday. No buses, most things were shut. We had wanted to do the Israel museum and Yad Vashem in one shot, both being far west of the old city. But the latter was closed for the day. We decided to taxi up the the museum anyway. The first taxi we tried said 50NIS to go there, so we tried a second taxi. He went by the metre, so we ended up paying 28 instead.

It was already midday by the time we got there. We grabbed and scoffed down some hotdogs before we went in.

The first and I guess main attraction is the shrine of the book.





This is the place where the dead sea scrolls are kept. They include the Isiah scroll, the one with the prophecy about beating weapons into plough shears and everyone being at peace. Which is nice. They also had war prophecies too. Most of the scrolls were from the Qumran. They were a cult like ascetic sect of religious Jews that made their own community in the mountains. They were hard core. They even included the less observant Jews as heathens.

We walked through a tunnel with their artefacts and then a room with their scrolls. Then down stairs to the Alepo Codex.

There were all these writings that someone decided were ´bible´ or ´not bible´. Some became side texts, some just disappeared. Such an old religion.So much is an accumulation of interpretations over time. The people with the power to make the interpretations and slight changes to these are the ones who determine the religion (older white men in positions of religious power). The interpretations were made in the context of the societies and cultural beliefs of the time, some that we would never approve of today. It all just seems to subjective.

Then to the 1:50 scale model of Jerusalem during the second temple. It was awesomely huge. Quite impressive.







The Judaica and Art wings were closed for renovation, so we went to the exhitibion of Israeli art, 1998-2008. It had some great and interesting pieces. There was a video of a performance piece by Shahar Marcus. In front of the shrine of the book, two people played a giant chess game. The piece were huge ice blocks (and maybe cola blocks?) that kept melting with each move. The timer was an hourglass with ping pong balls instead, standing a couple of meters. Inside with the balls was the artist, who kept getting turned upside down each time the glass turned.



We exited the museum and decided to get ice cream. We had wanted to get ice cream since Egypt, but hadn't gotten around to it. So this was our chance. I got a gelato tasting watermelon ice cream. Delicious.



Later we picked up fresh corn from a street vendor. Also delicious.



At night I heard a loud Canadian accent outside our room. I went to check it out and ended up having a long conversation with this guy who had just finished the birthright program and was on his way to Egypt.