8 | JUNE 9 • 2022 

PURELY COMMENTARY

opinion 
What Is a Jew? 

Israel’s renovated diaspora museum attempts a three-story answer.
I

was on a short visit to Israel 
last week and spent time 
with a friend with whom I 
have been engaged in a 30-year 
argument. Elli Wohlgelernter 
and I met when he was the 
managing editor of the Jewish 
Telegraphic 
Agency, and I 
was a staff report-
er. We would 
argue about the 
future of Jewish 
life in the dias-
pora, which even 
then he consid-
ered in unstoppable decline. We 
continued the argument after he 
moved to Israel not soon after. 
Over the years, we’ve both 
dug in our heels: I am con-
vinced, even after living for a 
time in Israel, that aliyah is a 
happy choice but not the only 
defensible choice a Jew can 
make in the 21st century, and 
that Israel is not the sine qua 
non of global Jewish creativi-
ty — or inevitability — in the 
decades since its founding.
Elli is as convinced that the 
galut — the Hebrew term for 
exile — is doomed, physically 
and spiritually, as Jews assim-
ilate into oblivion or face yet 
another cycle of historical per-

secution. 
(Neither of us, I hope, is as 
tendentious or as boring as 
this sounds, at least not Elli, 
who is passionate about base-
ball, Jewish comedy, classic 
Hollywood and old-fashioned, 
ink-stained American tabloid 
journalism.)
Last week, we picked up our 
old argument where we had left 
off. And thinking to give it a 
little fresh material, I suggested 
a visit to ANU-Museum of the 
Jewish People. The museum for-
merly known as Beit Hatfutsot 
opened on the Tel Aviv 
University campus in 1978, and 
recently underwent a major ren-
ovation and rebranding in order 
to convey “the fascinating nar-
rative of the Jewish people and 
the essence of the Jewish culture, 
faith, purpose and deed.
”
I remember visiting the 
museum in my 20s, when the 
old Beit Hatfutsot was about a 
decade old and still considered 
state of the art. There were 
dioramas depicting scenes out 
of various eras in Jewish history 
and an unforgettable display of 
models of synagogues through-
out the ages. I also remember 
the criticism at the time: that 
the museum presented diaspo-

ra Jewish life as a thing of the 
past. Its exhibit was organized 
according to “gates,
” the last 
being the “gate of return,
” with 
immigration to Israel presented 
less as a choice than a culmi-
nation.

A ‘MOSAIC’
Amir Maltz, the museum’s 
vice president for marketing, 
acknowledged that criticism 
when he met us in ANU’s lobby. 
“People from abroad would 
visit and say, ‘I don’t see myself 
here,
’” as if their lives outside of 
Israel weren’t valid or vital. He 
suggested we start on the third 
floor, labeled “Mosaic,
” which, 
he said, more than acknowledg-
es that 50% of the world’s Jews 

don’t live in Israel and insists 
that there is no one right way of 
being a Jew. 
And sure enough, the first 
thing you see are life-size videos 
of various individuals explain-
ing their distinct versions of 
Jewishness. The walls nearby are 
lined with large-format photo-
graphs of various families: reli-
gious, secular and somewhere 
in between. There is a mixed-
race couple, a same-sex Israeli 
couple and two heavily tattooed 
hipsters. It certainly represented 
the varieties of Jews I encounter 
in New York, and some of the 
exuberance seen in and around 
Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda 
market. The experts would call 
this pluralism, although it’s just 
the reality of who we are. 
Similarly, the second-floor 
history section begins with a 
wall title proclaiming “
A People 
Among Peoples” — surely less 
Zion-centric than “
A People in 
Exile” or “
A People Dispersed,
” 
two other plausible alternatives. 
That history section was the 
least engaging to me, giving the 
vibe of an earnest middle school 
textbook trying a little too hard 
to make a long, twisting jour-
ney from Temple times to the 

Andrew 
Silow-Carroll 

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

An understated wall sign at ANU-Museum of the Jewish People is part 
of a room-sized video installation devoted to the establishment of the 
State of Israel.

es that 50% of the world’s Jews 

Israeli soldiers on an 
educational visit in the atrium 
of ANU-Museum of the 
Jewish People, which recently 
underwent a $100 million 
renovation, May 24, 2022. 

