Five years in the making and occupying an 8,000-square-foot gallery space, Noah’s Ark at the Skirball will remain on view permanently. Affirming that people must work together for a brighter future, Noah’s Ark is integral to the Skirball Cultural Center’s educational mission to explore Jewish heritage with the goal of making connections within and among families, generations and cultures.

The galleries are divided into three distinct and lively zones embodying the central themes of the Noah’s Ark story:

• Storms (meeting challenges),

• Arks (finding shelter and community)

By Gail Forman

PRAGUE, Czech Republic—Unlike the standard one-building edifice called “a museum,” the Jewish Museum of Prague is comprised of four historically rich, well-preserved synagogues with hundreds of beautiful Judaic artifacts, an ancient Jewish cemetery, and an educational and cultural center. It is located in the former boundaries of the Jewish Ghetto, now part of Prague’s architecturally eclectic, and somewhat fashionable Jewish Quarter.

The origins of the Museum began in 1906, when two Jewish historians, Dr. Hugo Leaven and Dr. Augustine Stein sought to preserve valuable synagogue artifacts and materials from the turn of the century demolition of and subsequent reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter. It was officially returned to the Jewish community in 1994, and is now considered one of the best Jewish sites in Europe. A unique aspect of this collection of Judaica is that its over 40,000 exhibits and over 100,000 books, are all collected from one region-Bohemia and Moravia.

One is immediately in awe of this small circle of synagogues all in one place, with one synagogue, the Old-New Synagogue, built in the 11^th century, the oldest active synagogue in Europe. One imagines the tales that could be told walking these cobblestone streets covering five centuries of Jewish life.

Bill Shalkin has a wonderful story in today's Los Angeles Times about the start-up of the Israel Baseball League.  Here's his lead, but you've got to read his story: "It's an old joke, so indulge us with a chuckle, or a groan. But do you know where to find baseball in the Bible?  Why, in the very first sentence: In the big inning …"
 

• Authentic artifacts from the ancient site of Qumran, fully interpreted, incorporating the latest scholarship and scientific research
   

• Modern science at work through DNA analysis, Carbon-14 dating and other scientific methods used to piece together the Dead Sea Scroll puzzle
   

• Panoramic photography exploring the geographical similarities between San Diego county, Israel and Jordan

• Modern interpretations of the text from Ethiopia and St. John’s University in Minnesota
   

• The original excavation equipment used in the 1950s
   

• A bilingual audio tour of the exhibition (included with admission)

To ensure preservation of the 2000-year-old parchment, the Israel Antiquities Authority only allows scrolls to be exhibited for a three-month period. The Museum has been granted the unusual opportunity for a six-month exhibition with 12 scrolls displayed for the first three months and an additional 12 in the last three months. In addition, three Dead Sea Scrolls from Jordan will be on display throughout the course of the exhibition. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls were initially discovered by Bedouin herders and then by archaeologists between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near Khirbet Qumran, on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea in Israel. Thousands of fragments were discovered and pieced together into over 900 separate documents including biblical books, hymns, prayers, and other important writings.

The Dead Sea Scrolls date from 250 BCE to 68 CE. Among them are some 230 biblical manuscripts representing nearly every book in the Hebrew Bible; more than 1000 years older than any previously known copies. There are also apocryphal manuscripts (texts excluded from the biblical canon) previously known only in translation or not at all.

Most scholars believe the scrolls were copied and composed by a group that broke away from mainstream Judaism to live a communal life at Qumran. This group, known to us from ancient writers, saw themselves as the "true Israel" and viewed those living in Jerusalem, including the priesthood at the Temple, as corrupt. The sectarian scrolls—non-biblical texts—reflect a wide variety of literary genres: biblical commentary, religious legal writings, liturgical (prayer) texts, and compositions that predict a coming apocalypse. They reveal the fascinating transition between the ancient religion of the Bible and Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

.When the Romans invaded Qumran around 68 CE, the community hid their manuscripts in nearby caves. Their brand of Judaism did not survive the destruction, though many of their practices made their way into both Judaism and Christianity.

Outdoors, the Noah’s Ark experience continues in a rustic arroyo garden with narrow paths and wooden bridges, featuring a rainbow mist installation developed by Safdie in partnership with MacArthur prize-winning environmental artist Ned Kahn. In addition, performances and special activities will be presented regularly in an adjacent 350-seat amphitheater.

“The Skirball Cultural Center was founded as a tent of welcome, where visitors of all ages and walks of life feel at home and part of a community,” says Dr. Uri D. Herscher, Founding President and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center. “With the opening of Noah’s Ark at the Skirball, we are honored to offer a safe harbor—an ark—for children and families, a place that offers them a joyful, meaningful experience like no other.”

Herscher continues, “The ancient flood story communicates a cogent message that our world desperately needs at this time—we must collaborate to survive and thrive, learn from the past and appreciate the gift of new beginnings.”

Noah’s Ark at the Skirball is conceived as a journey, taking visitors on an ark voyage from a stormy world to dry land. Visitors are welcomed into a pre-flood zone, offering hands-on opportunities to make thunder, rain and wind using low-tech, mechanical sound devices and invented instruments. Upon entering the galleries, visitors mingle with pairs of life-size animal puppets from the five continents, all crafted from recycled materials—or, in many cases, everyday objects such as bottle caps, bicycle parts, baseball mitts, croquet balls, mop heads and rear-view mirrors.

While continuing to interact with the animals, visitors will help construct a floor-to-ceiling ark, load animals two by two and climb aboard. They will help the animals settle in, unpack shipping crates, climb rafters, feed the animals, clean up the living quarters and work together to keep everyone on board safe.

The ark also displays examples of Noah’s Ark–themed folk art from a collection gifted by philanthropist Lloyd Cotsen to the Skirball’s distinguished museum. These colorful objects from countries around the world underscore the universality of the ancient flood tradition.

Noah’s Ark at the Skirball culminates in a post-flood zone, where a special light feature transmits a rainbow across the gallery. Here, visitors can participate in facilitated activities to be scheduled throughout the year, including art making, storytelling, nature experiments, creative movement and spontaneous daily “happenings” initiated by a corps of multilingual gallery staff. Visitors can express their hopes for a better world and see them projected onto a large wall in the final gallery.

Upon exiting the gallery space, visitors encounter additional activities and performances in the adjacent amphitheater. As a final flourish, visitors can play in the soft mists emitted by the rainbow installation in the arroyo garden.

Noah’s Ark is intended to be a destination that families and school groups return to again and again, with certain elements changing over time. Programming, ark props, folk art displays and games will rotate regularly. In addition, field trips for pre-K through second grade students will be offered during the school year, as well as after-school visits for students in renowned Los Angeles–based programs like Para Los Niños and L.A.’s BEST.

“We aspired to capture the best of art and children’s museums, cultural centers and parks,” remarks Sheri L. Bernstein, Skirball Director of Education. “And we have tried to create an experience that is both contemporary and timeless, that inspires people of all generations to work together to improve our world.”

One of the world’s most dynamic Jewish cultural institutions, the Skirball Cultural Center opened to the public in 1996. Its mission is to explore the connections between four thousand years of Jewish heritage and the vitality of American democratic ideals. The Skirball seeks to welcome and inspire people of every ethnic and cultural identity, to build a society in which all of us can feel at home.

The Skirball features an extraordinary museum, changing exhibitions, engaging music, theater, comedy, film, family and literary programs, classes, Zeidler’s Café and Audrey’s Museum Store—all in a hillside setting designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. More than 500,000 people visit the Skirball each year. Its acclaimed school program annually serves over 50,000 students and teachers, of which 85% are from public schools.

Our tour did not include the Old-New Synagogue, which required an additional ticket purchase. My husband and I were surprised by the high cost of the Museum tickets, a combination ticket for four synagogues, not including the Old-New Synagogue was about $15American dollars. Separately, the Old-New Synagogue was an additional $10 American dollars. In a recent conversation with San Diego Chabad Rabbi Moishe Leider, he also mentioned the steep admission price and said thought that all the synagogues should be free and open to everyone.

The start of our guided tour began in the Maisel Synagogue, built originally in 1590 by Mordechai Maisel, the mayor of the Jewish ghetto, as his own private place of worship. Today it hosts an incredible collection of Judaica, including fabulously ornate Torah scroll tapestries and beautiful cast silver ceremonial objects. It was lavishly decorated with beautiful Torah mantels and textiles. Its unique architectural design included a construction on twenty pillars with a large nave, and side areas for women.

Maisel was also the very generous benefactor who purchased a garden adjacent to the ghetto to expand its’ perimeters, gave money to erect another synagogue, the High Synagogue, built a public bathhouse and mikvah, and also paid for paving ghetto streets.

During World War ll, the Maisel Synagogue became the depository for Jewish artifacts and property confiscated by the Nazis from the Jews throughout Bohemia and Moravia. When the Nazis entered Sudetenland, in 1939, the museum closed to the public. When the Nazis occupied the rest of the Czech lands, they used the Museum as a depository for confiscated Jewish property and artifacts.

A narrative on the synagogue wall charts an historical recounting of the thousand years of Czech Jewish history and the importance of Jews within the region, particularly in the Middle Ages. Jews are recorded to have been in the Czech lands beginning in the 10^th century. They worked as merchants and artisans, and at that time, were permitted to set up their own communities adjacent to the common city markets, close to the Prague Castle.

The history of Jews in Prague, however, is one of alternating tolerance and intolerance, depending on the era’s politics and reining royalty. During the Crusades, they were massacred outright. Many surviving Jews were forced to convert to Christianity, and their new Jewish settlement in the 12^th century established a new Jewish Ghetto, away from the main economic centers of Prague. Later on, in the 13^th century, Jews were required to wear distinctive clothes identifying themselves as Jews, and they were considered “slaves” of the king. There was a short period of some civil rights, until the 15-century, but it did not allow the Jewish community to flourish until the 16^th century, known as the Prague Renaissance.

During this time, royal authority declined due to a series of Hussite Wars and conflicts between Burghers, the landed nobility, and royalty. The landed nobility reaffirmed the Jews civil rights and opened the doors to economic opportunity.

Jews that had been expelled from Moravia, Germany and Austria settled in Prague. Jews became mathematicians, astronomers, and philosophers. From 1522-1541, the Jewish population of Prague doubled. By the end of the 17 th the century, Prague had eleven thousand Jews, the largest population of Jews in the world at that time.

This is the time many synagogues were built, and Jewish philosophy and Kabbala flourished. Rabbi Mordechai Loew, also known as the Marahal, served as a great religious leader and established the Klause Talmudic Academy. He was also a leading intellectual, and a friend to Rudolph 11. He was greatly loved and respected in Prague, and was rumored to have magical powers. Legends swirl around the Maharal as a magician who created a human-type being out of earth called The Golem. The purpose of this creature was of a singular nature—to protect Jews from incriminations and subsequent punishment of accusations of blood libel.

The next part of our Museum tour was inside the Klausen Synagogue where more Jewish artifacts showed the religious and ceremonial customs of the Jews. The Klausen used to be the second most important synagogue in Prague, and was the site of the Maharal’s Klaus Talmudic Academy, and the Prague Burial Society. The architecture is rich with vaulted ceilings, and decorative stucco on ceilings and walls and intricate stained glass windows.

Visitors can access two floors of the synagogue where they are introduced to Jewish religious and ceremonial objects and customs, including the traditional preparations for Jewish burial.

As the next part of the tour, we moved to the Pinkus Synagogue, an incredibly unique edifice which resembles a Gothic Vault built in the late seventeenth century. Like the Maisel Synagogue, this synagogue was originally built for the personal use of the Horowitz family, a group of well-known Kabbala scholars.

The narrative text here picks up where the Maisel Synagogue leaves off—historically from the Middle Ages to the Nazi Holocaust. It contains a very moving Holocaust tribute to these victims. The names of dead and the villages they came from are written clearly all over a large section of the synagogue. An upstairs exhibit contains artwork done by children, most of whom lost their lives, while interned in Terezin concentration camp, just forty five minutes outside of Prague.                  

It was a moving memorial to see 77,000 names listed—people gone whose names and artifacts remain. It was a stark reality. The Nazis killed off 85 percent of the Czech Jews.

Except for the Holocaust remembrance exhibit, throughout the synagogues we toured, I was numbed, but not moved. I looked at artifact after artifact, Torah mantle after Torah mantle, Gothic architecture or Renaissance architecture and narratives about where Jews lived, what occupations they had, who killed them when and where.

I eavesdropped on several different tour guides-picking up what I could in Spanish, or a few words German. The tourists respectfully listened to the guides, but somehow, having Jewish life compressed into a few ancient buildings, seemed remote, not a true representation of Judaism. Jews seemed to be being treated as oddities—an ancient group of people who practiced these customs, believed these things, and used these objects. It seemed to be an archeological tour aimed at digging up fossils.

Its value was as a remembrance of life passed and acknowledgement of the extraordinary toll the Czech region experienced during the Holocaust. But lacking any information about Jews in the present time, or even about Israel today, instead of a sense of renewal, it sounded a mournful dirge.

The Pinkus Synagogue led directly to the Old Jewish Cemetery, our last stop on the accompanied tour.

When we passed into the cemetery, the sun had just come through a previously overcast sky and the greenery surrounding the gravestones seemed to glisten. The cemetery was established in 1439 and was used until 1787. I passed the grave of the Maharal, its etched lettering still clearly visible after 400 years. Many headstones had symbolic pictures or patterns that reflected that person’s social status or occupation.

Various multi-colored small size birds flitted from gravestone to trees, to the ground. If so many birds enjoyed this venue, then it must be fertile ground. And for the first time, which I cannot explain, since I began the Jewish Museum tour, I felt relief—and repose. Amidst these ancient headstones, piled layer upon layer on top of each other because of space restraints, I felt I was among Jews. Their spirit seemed to rise and come to life above the ground.

As a Boomer, I was one year old when Israel was declared a state, and it has always been in my consciousness as a Jew.

I’m optimistic about the future of Jewish life, and am not tied down to the past. I feel no chains on me as a Jew, which was experienced by many of the Jews facing Hitler, or the Communists who occupied Czechoslovakia until 1989.

As a Jewish American, I live a privileged life of choice—which synagogue to attend, when and how to celebrate my Judaism. Somehow, naively, I wanted to transport that sense of Jewish spirit here.

However, Hitler murdered 72,000 Czech Jews. That’s approximately the same number of Jews living today in San Diego County. Imagine if a similar scenario took place in San Diego. Let’s say all the Jews are taken away and disappear. What would San Diego look like without Jews? What artifacts would the people who came after us preserve? How would they choose what artifacts to exhibit? How would the tour guides describe us? Would we appear to be a now-extinct, eradicated group of people?

Today in the Czech Republic, there are three thousand affiliated Jews out of a population of twelve million. In Prague, there are about 1,500 Jews whose average age has dropped over the past few years from 80 to 57. There may be more Jews, but years of Nazi and Russian occupation has left many Jews hesitant to identify themselves openly.

There are two Kosher restaurants. There is a deli- style restaurant and a formal sit-down restaurant, The King Solomon. They are conveniently located near to one another, but when we visited on several occasions, we were either the only customers or there was one other customer there.

Encouraging news is that Chabad has a presence in Prague and runs both the deli and a children’s school. In addition to Orthodox synagogue options, there is also Beit Simcha, a small alternative Havurah group, Beit Praha,a Reconstructionist Jewish group, and a reform synagogue that offers services only for the High Holidays.

It appears to be a slow crawl back, but there are small signs of revitalization.

POSTSCRIPT—My husband and I left Prague wondering if there were any way could make a contribution to the growth of Jewish life in the Czech Republic. We had had a wonderful trip in so many ways, but the lack of a vibrant Jewish presence haunted us.

Then, as if by “beshert” a possible answer appeared on the flight back home from Prague. We had a chance meeting with Steven Sternfeld, a professor of Linguistics at The University of Utah. He was on his way back home from a three-week educational program sponsored by his university in the small, southwestern Czech town of Susice.

Student interns, mainly students training to teach ESL, came there and boarded with Czech families and participated in an English immersion program for local students and residents. That would have been amazingly coincidental enough since I am an ESL teacher, and had given some thought to teaching English in Eastern Europe.

The Hartmanice Memorial reconstruction began in 2002 and the beautiful synagogue has just been refurbished as a living memorial to Czech, Jewish, and German reconciliation. There are now social, educational and cultural programs that show how these three ethnic groups got along very well before World War ll. There are also lectures on anti-Semitism and educational programs for children. It has also been declared a Cultural Heritage site, and has won architectural awards.

That seems like an already complete package, but the problem is that it’s a synagogue without Jews. Sternfeld is proposing setting up a network to interest, and inform Jews and Jewish communities worldwide to come to the site to visit, help develop programs, and hopefully spearhead a movement to have Jews come back to live, thrive, and practice Judaism there.

For more information on Hartmanice visit the website. 

Our Jewish Museum tour already illustrated that refurbishing a synagogue and setting up cultural and educational programs does not necessarily mean the revitalization of a people. It will take living, breathing Jews to restore the soul of a decimated community. We’re on board. How about you?