After 23 years in the Land of Israel, I came for the first time on a guided tour of the Israel Museum.<\/p>\r\n
To be fair, I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of museums and galleries. Maybe it's attention deficit disorder or just a lack of interest in the content. But this time I was surprised to find that I left with more thoughts and questions than usual.<\/p>\r\n
I was surprised to discover a connection between Canaanites and Hasidim. Admittedly an unusual connection, but certainly one that is a source of optimism.<\/p>\r\n
What are things supposed to be?<\/p>\r\n
One of the most fascinating exhibits in the museum was a statue of Nimrod. The statue is placed in the middle of what is called the "Cardo" in the museum - a central space from which one turns to each of the different wings - Judaica, archaeology, Israeli art, sculptures from South America - and in the center of Nimrod.<\/p>\r\n
The creator of this performance was an Israeli artist named Yitzhak Danziger. Danziger was at the center of a group of artists and intellectuals who were nicknamed "the Canaanites.".<\/p>\r\n
The first feeling that came to my mind was the thought of the statue's identity: Nimrod?<\/p>\r\n
Anyone who has even a shred of affection for Jewish tradition understands that Nimrod represents the complete opposite of Jewish, or if you will, Hebrew, values. Nimrod is described in the Midrash as a murderer and generally as a rebel against God. Without a doubt, he stands opposite the figure of our forefather Abraham, who reveals to the world the principles of the Jewish religion and the destruction of idols.<\/p>\r\n
What, then, was Danziger trying to say, and what did the Canaanites actually add to the discourse in the 1930s?<\/p>\r\n
Ridiculous thought<\/b><\/b><\/p>\r\n
That group thought that in order to establish a state, one must, in essence, renew civilization.<\/p>\r\n
That group - which was never particularly large, and has since disappeared from view - aspired for the future state to be assimilated into the region and hence sought an identity that predates even the nation's founders, our forefathers Abraham and Isaac.<\/p>\r\n
This thought seems quite ridiculous today: a group of European refugees (Danziger himself was born in Germany and studied art in London) seeks to skip or erase thousands of years of tradition and history and resemble ancient tribes...<\/p>\r\n
So what anyway?<\/p>\r\n
Apparently, in the Land of Israel landscape of the 1930s and 1940s, the thought of radically breaking away from Jewish origins was not as ridiculous as it seems to us today.<\/p>\r\n
Here is an example of the worldview of this group in 1944 - the year in which the extermination of European Jews was in full swing. The writings of the group's leader, Jonathan Ratosh, clearly suggest that from the perspective of the Canaanites, the fate of European Jews was not related to them, and therefore "stay away and do nothing" was preferable to attempting to save Jews and bring them to the Land of Israel. This is a view that involves a great deal of cruelty.<\/p>\r\n
Sound scary to you?<\/p>\r\n
This type of ideology is still expressed in certain circles today. For example, one can draw a line between them and those who favor the repeal of the Law of Return, or those who seek to replace the nationality "Jewish" with the identity card "Israeli.".<\/p>\r\n
An open question remains: Why does the museum management leave the statue in such a central place? Ideological expression? Inertia? Historical importance?<\/p>\r\n
These are questions for the leaders of the Mossad.<\/p>\r\n
The Haredim are also interested<\/b><\/b><\/p>\r\n
Continuing our pleasant tour of the museum, we saw various other exhibits that took us on a journey from these days to thousands of years ago. There is no doubt that a place like this provides a perspective of time and illustrates the existence of the story of the Jewish people, in the Land of Israel and beyond, while raising questions of Israeli and Jewish identity even in 2016.<\/p>\r\n
Meanwhile, the guide there told about a special exhibition that was at the museum in 2012.<\/p>\r\n
\""Chassidim - Not Just Black and White" was an ethnographic exhibition about Chassidim and Hasidism, through photographs of clothing and the year cycle, within the Hasidic world.<\/p>\r\n
What struck me about the guide's description was not the description of the exhibits themselves, but the interest the exhibition aroused in the Haredi public. It turns out that these arrived in numbers that were never familiar to the Israel Museum, which does not really meet Haredi standards from a cultural or halachic perspective.<\/p>\r\n
According to the report, in those days the museum was visited by over 100,000 visitors, half of whom were Haredi who were not frightened by the statues, or by the lack of separate hours for men and women.<\/p>\r\n
So what did I learn from the challenging visit to the Israel Museum?<\/p>\r\n
For over a century, there has been a great polemic between the ultra-Orthodox and secular, with the Zionist elite at the heart of the debate, on the one hand, proposing to replace the religious in general and the ultra-Orthodox in particular - and to place a new Jewish or Canaanite figure in their place, and on the other hand, the ultra-Orthodox narrative that holds that there is no long-term Jewish existence without observance of the Torah and commandments.<\/p>\r\n
The visit to the site, which offers expression to both populations, shows that even if today it is still difficult to see a constellation of Haredim and secularists, not to mention Haredim and Canaanites living together, creating a kind of dialogue or at least coexistence, at least in the museum it was possible to prove that this is possible.<\/p>\r\n
And this, too, is a reason for optimism about a more united future.<\/p>\r\n
\u2022 Daniel Goldman is the chairman of Gesher, and a businessman living in the city of Beit Shemesh.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is a statue of a murderer and rebel doing in the center of the Hebrew Museum? \u2022 Daniel Goldman returned from a fascinating visit to the Israel Museum and discovered that despite everything, there is still reason for optimism and coexistence in the State of Israel","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-138"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n