ABSTRACT
It seemed to me that the Israel Museum, which had been built since I had last been in Jerusalem, was one of the best-designed I had ever seen. It is relatively low and makes a rambling impression, since the different departments are segments which are adapted to the configuration of the hillside on which it stands, so that you go up and down a few steps in passing from one to another. There is so much space in the rooms that the presentation of exhibits is never confused or crowded: gold and silver and copper menorahs and scroll cases and spice boxes and other rich and curious objects collected from wealthy synagogues; folk pictures illustrating the Bible that include a delightful series on the ideal housewife described in Proverbs, and modern paintings that include one of those gruesome Francis Bacons, more distorted than any folk painting, which are as far as possible from referring to a well-ordered and pious society; Latin inscriptions and pseudo-Greek fauns from the Roman occupation; the mosaic floor from a synagogue and the whole of a Venetian synagogue, transported and reconstructed—all of these side by side with the old bones and stones and fabrics that take us back to the age of Solomon and even to the age of Abraham. Behind the museum is an esplanade park, with a widely spaced display of sculpture—much of it bequeathed by Billy Rose, the American theatrical producer—which 350ranges from Rodin and Maillol, through a collection of Epstein busts, also left by the sculptor to Israel, to the mechanical contraptions and outlandish objects of which one may now see specimens in the "far-out" collections of New York museums. Jerusalem is quite austere— not merely, I think, from necessity but also, I believe, in submission to the traditional Mosaic ban against making "graven images," which, in spite of the splendor of the sacred objects that have been gathered from these richer synagogues, extends to the visual amenities in general. It has been only in our own day that it seems to have become possible for a Jew to indulge in such artistic exploits as the blazing and gorgeous windows created by Marc Chagall for the embellishment of the Hadassah hospital. (Yet Chagall is said to be dissatisfied with the dreary little box of a chapel which makes such an inadequate setting for them.)
