Museum Day

Monday, I decided the time had come to hit a museum. There are several good ones in Tel Aviv and I hadn’t made it to one yet. I really wanted to go to the Museum of the Diaspora on the University of Tel Aviv campus. It is supposed to be very unusual…instead of containing artifacts from the past it recreates the daily living of Jews throughout history. I started out with coffee on the balcony overlooking the Med and then caught a cab and it dropped me off in front of a museum. Now, the cab driver had been a little confused about where I wanted to go. The guide books here are not very useful and never give street addresses but by dint of locating the corresponding number on the tiny map in the guide book and pointing to it, I thought we had been successful. Turns out, he had taken me to the Eratz Israel museum which is apparently a museum of Israel before it was Israel. The guard at this museum said it was only a 15 minute walk to the other one. In Israeli, that translates to about 45 minutes for me. I decided I didn’t want to risk getting lost (or walk in the heat) so I thought I’d just check out the one I was at.

It was very odd. It had an unusual layout. It’s a large piece of property with several “pavilions” on it dealing with different subjects. First off, the ones I was most interested in were closed. Folk tales, anthropology and the parable garden - all closed. The planetarium was in Hebrew so that was out. After passing through the loading zone to get a drink in the cafeteria because the front entrance of it was closed, I was beginning to doubt my decision. The layout of the grounds was actually extremely pretty, but the museum part…hmmm. I started with the pavilion of crafts. This is where the glassblowing, agriculture, basket weaving etc was. A more boring museum exhibit you could not hope to find. Here’s a plow from 1000 years ago. Here’s a plow from 500 years ago, here’s a plow from 400 years ago. Here’s a basket made of reeds. Here’s a basket made of palm leaves. Here’s a basket made from…you get the drift. I figured I’d go through one more exhibit and call it a day. I saw a very cool looking area with interesting architecture and cool lighting but up on closer inspection it turned out to be a restaurant which was closed. Then in the distance, I saw a picture of Einstein, one of my personal heroes, so I decided to brave the scorching heat (I had been sticking places under the shady grape arbors. I passed the coin museum - yuck - about the only thing worse than the coin museum in my mind would be the postal museum. I get to the Einstein sign and it’s for…the postal museum! I decided to go in for a bit even though I have 0 interest in the subject because it might after all be air-conditioned! I go in….and the postal museum was the most interesting place there! The exhibits were done in a much more modern methods, silk screened images, old telephones displayed like modern art pieces, kiosk where you can dial up and watch old newsreel bout the postal service. And the history info was fascinating as well, the history of the postal service in pre-Israel being a history of the shifting national powers trying to gain economic and political control of the region. And it concluded with a special exhibit devoted to the iconic image of Einstein, based on stamps but including all sorts of images. I spent quite a while in there and revised my opinion of the museum. It also had a really great museum store with super nice pieces…most of it out of my price rang abut I did add a little to my draydle collection. After several hours there I headed home to work on my research and recover from the heat. Deb and I have discovered that her favorite restaurant, the Brasserie, delivers so we ordered dinner from the Brasserie (they make a wicked BLT.) and watched Angel.