Tolerance Museum and Jerusalem Municipality turn new page, agree to work together
With court case behind them, mayor meets with museum co-chair Larry Mizel and will soon tour facility; city culture official to work directly with museum
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem (MOTJ) and the Jerusalem Municipality have turned a new page in their relationship, confirming on Sunday that they would henceforth work in full cooperation and partnership.
The move comes as the museum — dogged for two decades by public controversy, redesigns, and court cases — prepares to partially open to the public in mid-May.
It will do so with an exhibition of 120 works by world-renowned photographers, showing aspects of life in the fledgling Jewish state to mark Israel’s 75th birthday.
On Thursday, a thank-you event was held at the museum, hosted together with the Jerusalem Post, for some 120 donors.
It featured a keynote speech by Florida governor and potential GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis.
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion also addressed the event.
On Friday, Lion met with MOTJ co-chairman Larry Mizel and Operations Manager Jonathan Riss.
The council’s director-general has appointed Ariela Rejwan, his deputy in charge of culture and leisure, to be the city’s point person for the museum.
A municipal statement said, “The Tolerance Museum is working in coordination and partnership with the Jerusalem Municipality.”
It said relevant city officials would be touring the museum in the coming days to create a timetable for the full-time opening of the building. It added that cooperation would be “maximized” for the sake of Jerusalem’s residents and the many delegations from Israel and the world who would visit the facility in the future.
At 188,000 square feet (17,500 square meters), and costing $230 million to construct, the gargantuan facility is four times the size of Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust museum.
Thursday’s visitors were able to wander around the two floors above ground that are connected by what looks like a floating staircase. The floors are off-white, made of the same Portuguese “Mocca cream” marble as the exterior, but with a different finish. The chairs in the 400-seat auditorium come from Italy, while the building’s ceilings incorporate top-of-the-line acoustic treatment from Germany. The floor-to-ceiling windows looking south onto Independence Park, carry differing patterns of dots to minimize the sun’s heat and radiation.
All of this, according to Riss, is to provide the most comfortable atmosphere for dialogue.
Outside, the building is meant to resemble a bridge that links (Arab) East and (Jewish) West Jerusalem, the Old City and the New.
A 1,000-seat outdoor amphitheater boasts a stage for theater and concerts, which transforms into a cinema at the press of a button. Pillars carrying spotlights simply disappear into the ground, while a huge screen rises out of the floor.
The two subterranean floors are not yet complete — an issue that until now has dogged relations between the museum and the city.
The upper basement contains a 150-seat theater and a series of green rooms for performers, and will eventually host a children’s museum, stretching over 1,300 square meters (14,000 square feet).
The lower basement contains the beginnings of a museum for adults that will occupy 3,000 square meters (32,300 square feet).
The museum’s Operations Manager, Jonathan Riss, told The Times of Israel that he thought it would take another 18 months to complete the museum.
The project was first announced in 2000 by Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
The acclaimed architect Frank Gehry produced the first design, but quit in 2010. Israeli architects Bracha and Michael Chyutin were brought in instead. They designed the current structure.
When the Israeli Antiquities Authority began its usual pre-construction salvage dig, reports emerged that graves and human remains were being exposed, prompting an organization affiliated with the now illegal Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement to petition the High Court against the works.
The court suspended excavations in 2005, but ruled in 2008 that construction could resume. Then came the world financial crisis, which bit into the museum’s balance sheet.
Construction eventually was begun again, but had not been completed when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, leaving Chinese workers stranded in China and delaying architectural work on the museums by a company in the US.
Last year, the Jerusalem Municipality’s patience ran out and it tried to nullify an agreement to allow the museum to build an auditorium on Cats’ Square, just opposite the museum building. The bid failed.
Riss, an Israeli based in Denver, Colorado, has been involved with the project for 23 years, helping to shepherd the museum through all of its ups and downs.
Recently, he has been working with Mizel to rejuvenate the museum’s board. One dynamic new addition is the Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, who has brought several high-profile international sporting and cultural events to the capital.
The names of additional new board members from Israel will be announced in the coming weeks.
