1.
Eretz Israel Museum
–
The Eretz Israel Museum is a historical and archeological museum in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel. Eretz Israel Museum, established in 1953, has a display of archaeological, anthropological and historical artifacts organized in a series of exhibition pavilions on its grounds. Each pavilion is dedicated to a different subject, glassware, ceramics, coins, copper, the museum also has a planetarium. The Man and His Work wing features live demonstrations of ancient methods of weaving, jewelry and pottery making, grain grinding, Tel Quasile, an excavation in which 12 distinct layers of culture have been uncovered, is on the grounds of the museum. Four smelting furnaces are on display, Bowl furnace from the Chalcolithic period Domed furnace of the Late Bronze Age Authentic Late Bronze Age furnace Shaft furnace of the Iron Age. Remnants of a furnace from the 13th century CE were discovered alongside the Crusader fortress at Sommelaria. In the 14th century BCE, the Egyptian pharaohs dispatched mining expeditions to Timna, alongside expert metalsmiths from the Land of Midian, they extracted copper at Timna until the early 12th century BCE. This pavilion houses a Midianite temple model, of special interest is the copper snake with gilded head found in the shrine, perhaps pointing to the biblical Nehushtan. This pavilion exhibits ancient glass vessels, the pavilion recounts the history of postal service in the Land of Israel from the mid-15th century until the founding of the state in 1948. On display are envelopes, letters, photographs, posters, mailboxes and telephones, the philatelic wing displays valuable and rare stamps. List of museums in Israel Official site Eretz Israel Museum at ilMuseums. com http, //alexandercollection. org/
2.
Jerusalem
–
Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem
3.
Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
Art museum
–
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
5.
History museum
–
Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public, the goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, the city with the largest number of museums is Mexico City with over 128 museums. According to The World Museum Community, there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries, the English museum comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as museums. The first museum/library is considered to be the one of Plato in Athens, however, Pausanias gives another place called Museum, namely a small hill in Classical Athens opposite to the Akropolis. The hill was called Mouseion after Mousaious, a man who used to sing on the hill, the purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display items of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the education of the public. The purpose can also depend on ones point of view, to a family looking for entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, a trip to a local history museum or large city art museum could be a fun, and enlightening way to spend the day. To city leaders, a healthy museum community can be seen as a gauge of the health of a city. To a museum professional, a museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museums mission, Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge. In 1829, James Smithsons bequest, that would fund the Smithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to establish an institution for the increase, Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the Victorian desire for consumption and for order. Gathering all examples of classification of a field of knowledge for research. As American colleges grew in the 19th century, they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students, while many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While there is a debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museums collection, there has been a consistent mission to protect. Much care, expertise, and expense is invested in efforts to retard decomposition in aging documents, artifacts, artworks. All museums display objects that are important to a culture, as historian Steven Conn writes, To see the thing itself, with ones own eyes and in a public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience can be enchanting. Museum purposes vary from institution to institution, some favor education over conservation, or vice versa. For example, in the 1970s, the Canada Science and Technology Museum favored education over preservation of their objects and they displayed objects as well as their functions. One exhibit featured a printing press that a staff member used for visitors to create museum memorabilia
6.
Hebrew language
–
Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
7.
Givat Ram
–
Givat Ram is a neighborhood in central Jerusalem. Ram is a Hebrew acronym for Rikuz Mefakdim – Hebrew, גבעת ריכוז-מפקדים, Officers assembly, therefore Givat Ram means Officers assembly hill. Before 1948, maps of the area drawn by the Survey of Palestine team tagged it as Karam es Sila, the name indicates it was a Karam belonging to Sala family or the grape field near stone quarries. Before Israels War of Independence in 1948, the area in the north was known by the Arabs as Sheikh Badr, in December 1949, the Israeli government headed by David Ben-Gurion, passed a resolution to build a government precinct in Jerusalem. Givat Ram, a hill in the west of the city, the topography of the site, made up of three ridges, meshed with the idea of establishing three clusters of buildings – the government precinct, a university campus and a museum. The northern part of the neighborhood, between the center and the university, where the government ministries are clustered, is officially known as Kiryat HaLeom. A new apartment project, Mishkenot Ha’uma, is being built in this area, the Wohl Rose Garden is also located in the neighborhood. The first salvage excavation was conducted before Binyanei HaUma was built, in July- August 1949, in May–June 1968, before a new hotel was built south of Binyanei HaUma, Avi-Yonah conducted a second salvage excavation. He found remains of a potters kiln, a preparation area for clay. The area had been covered by a layer of plaster upon which were found large mortaria and many bricks. In July 1993, an excavation in the northwestern corner dismantled kilns of the Tenth Legion
8.
Bible Lands Museum
–
The aim of the museum is to put the various peoples covered into historical context. The museum is located on Museum Row in Givat Ram, between the Israel Museum, The National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel, and the Bloomfield Museum of Science, the museum was founded by Elie Borowski in 1992 to house his personal collection. On a visit to Jerusalem in 1981, he met at a hotel, Batya Weiss and she put him in contact with Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. Borowski heeded her advice, and built the Bible Lands Museum, the main gallery displays hundreds of artifacts, ancient documents, idols, coins, statues, weapons, pottery, and seals from across the ancient Near East. Many topics are elaborated upon in brief articles on the walls, the museum also exhibits scale models of ancient sites in Jerusalem, a Ziggurat at Ur and the pyramids at Giza. While the museums emphasis is the history of ancient Near Eastern civilizations, for example, above a gallery of ancient Anatolian jugs is the verse Behold, Rebecca came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder, and she went down unto the fountain and drew water. com
9.
Knesset
–
The Knesset is the unicameral national legislature of Israel. As the legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister, approves the cabinet, in addition, the Knesset elects the State Comptroller. The Prime Minister may also dissolve the Knesset, however, until an election is completed, the Knesset maintains authority in its current composition. The Knesset is located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem, as the legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the president, approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government through its committees. It also has the power to waive the immunity of its members, remove the President and the State Comptroller from office, the Knesset is presided over by a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker. The Knesset is divided into committees, which amend bills on the appropriate subjects, Committee chairpersons are chosen by their members, on recommendation of the House Committee, and their factional composition represents that of the Knesset itself. Committees may elect sub-committees and delegate powers to them, or establish joint committees for issues concerning more than one committee, to further their deliberations, they invite government ministers, senior officials, and experts in the matter being discussed. There are four types of committees in the Knesset, permanent committees amend proposed legislation dealing with their area of expertise, and may initiate legislation. However, such legislation may only deal with Basic Laws and laws dealing with the Knesset, elections to the Knesset, Knesset members, or the State Comptroller. Special committees function in a manner to permanent committees, but are appointed to deal with particular manners at hand. Parliamentary inquiry committees are appointed by the plenum to deal with issues viewed as having national importance. The Ethics Committee is responsible for jurisdiction over Knesset members who violate the rules of ethics of the Knesset, within the framework of responsibility, the Ethics Committee may place various sanctions on a member, but is not allowed to restrict a members right to vote. The Knesset numbers 120 members, a subject which has often been a cause for proposed reforms and this proposed law has also been favoured by other politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu. The 120 members of the Knesset are popularly elected from a single electoral district to concurrent four-year terms. All Israeli citizens 18 years or older may vote in legislative elections, Knesset seats are allocated among the various parties using the DHondt method of party list proportional representation. A party or electoral alliance must pass the threshold of 3. 25% of the overall vote to be allocated a Knesset seat. Parties select their candidates using a closed list, thus, voters select the party of their choice, not any specific candidate. The electoral threshold was set at 1% from 1949 to 1992, then 1. 5% from 1992 to 2003
10.
Israeli Supreme Court
–
The Supreme Court is the highest court in Israel. It has ultimate jurisdiction over all other courts and, in some cases. The Supreme Court consists of 15 justices who are appointed by the Judicial Selection Committee, once appointed, justices serve until retirement at the age of 70, unless they resign, or are removed from office. The current President of the Supreme Court is Miriam Naor, the Supreme Court is situated in Jerusalems Givat Ram governmental campus. Its jurisdiction applies to all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, according to the principle of binding precedent, a ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every other court, except itself. Appointing Supreme Court Justices requires a majority of 7 of the 9 committee members, the three organs of state—the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government—as well as the bar association are represented in the Judges Nominations Committee. Thus, the shaping of the body, through the manner of judicial appointment, is carried out by all the authorities together. An eminent jurist can also be appointed to the Supreme Court, the number of Supreme Court justices is determined by a resolution of the Knesset. Currently, there are 15 Supreme Court Justices, at the head of the Supreme Court and at the head of the judicial system as a whole stands the President of the Supreme Court, and at his or her side, the Deputy President. A judges term ends when he or she reaches 70 years of age, resigns, dies, is appointed to another position that disqualifies him or her, as of December 2016 the Supreme Court Justices are, Liat Benmelech and Guy Shani serve as the Court Registrars. Below is a list of presidents of the Supreme Court, As an appellate court and it also considers appeals on judicial and quasi-judicial decisions of various kinds, such as matters relating to the legality of Knesset elections and disciplinary rulings of the Bar Association. The High Court of Justice grants relief through orders such as injunction, mandamus and Habeas Corpus, the Supreme Court can also sit at a “further hearing” on its own judgment. The Supreme Court, both as a court and the High Court of Justice, is normally constituted of a panel of three Justices. The Supreme Court sits as a panel of five justices or more in a ‘further hearing’ on a matter in which the Supreme Court sat with a panel of three justices. The Supreme Court may sit as a panel of an uneven number of justices than three in matters that involve fundamental legal questions and constitutional issues of particular importance. The length of service, for purpose, is calculated from the date of the appointment of the Judge to the Supreme Court. A special power, unique to the Supreme Court, is the power to order a retrial on a matter in which the defendant has been convicted by a final judgment. In practice, a ruling to hold a retrial is very rarely made, the Court announces its judgments through individually signed opinions setting out the result and underlying reasoning
11.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
–
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israels second oldest university established in 1918,30 years before the State of Israel. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot, the worlds largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J. Safra Givat Ram campus. The university has 5 affiliated teaching hospitals including the Hadassah Medical Center,7 faculties, more than 100 research centers, a third of all the doctoral candidates in Israel are studying in the Hebrew University. The first Board of Governors included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, four of Israels prime ministers are alumni of the Hebrew University. In the last decade, eight researchers and alumni of the University received the Nobel Prize, one was awarded the Fields Medal, one of the visions of the Zionist movement was the establishment of a Jewish university in the Land of Israel. Founding a university was proposed as far back as 1884 in the Kattowitz conference of the Hovevei Zion society, the cornerstone for the university was laid on July 24,1918. The Universitys first Chancellor was Judah Magnes, by 1947, the University had become a large research and teaching institution. Plans for a school were approved in May 1949, and in November 1949. In 1952, it was announced that the institute founded by the University in 1940 would become a full-fledged faculty. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, attacks were carried out against convoys moving between the Israeli-controlled section of Jerusalem and the University. The leader of the Arab forces in Jerusalem, Abdul Kader Husseini, after the Hadassah medical convoy massacre, in which 79 Jews, including doctors and nurses, were slaughtered, the Mount Scopus campus was cut off from Jerusalem. British soldier Jack Churchill coordinated the evacuation of 700 Jewish doctors, when the Jordan government denied Israeli access to Mount Scopus, a new campus was built at Givat Ram in western Jerusalem and completed in 1958. In the interim, classes were held in 40 different buildings around the city, the Terra Santa building in Rehavia, rented from the Franciscan Custodians of the Latin Holy Places, was also used for this purpose. A few years later, together with the Hadassah Medical Organization, by the beginning of 1967, the students numbered 12,500, spread among the two campuses in Jerusalem and the agricultural faculty in Rehovot. After the unification of Jerusalem, following the Six-Day War of June 1967, the University was able to return to Mount Scopus, in 1981 the construction work was completed, and Mount Scopus again became the main campus of the University. On July 31,2002, a member of a terrorist cell detonated a bomb during lunch hour at the Universitys Frank Sinatra cafeteria when it was crowded with staff and students. Nine people — five Israelis, three Americans, and one dual French-American citizen — were murdered and more than 70 wounded, World leaders, including Kofi Annan, President Bush, and the President of the European Union issued statements of condemnation. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Rothberg International School, the Rothberg International School features secular studies and Jewish/Israeli studies
12.
Venus of Berekhat Ram
–
The Venus of Berekhat Ram is a pebble found at Berekhat Ram on the Golan Heights in the summer of 1981 by archaeologist N. Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The term Venus follows the convention for labelling the unrelated Venus figurines of the Upper Paleolithic, the base object is an anthropomorphic red tufic pebble,35 mm long, which has had at least three grooves, possibly incised on it by a sharp-edged stone. One is a groove that encircles the narrower, more rounded end of the pebble. These grooves can be interpreted as marking the neck and arms of a figure and they closely resemble marks made in similar material by sharp-edged tools during exercises in experimental archaeology. The claim that the pebble has been incised to represent a figure has been questioned in three ways, Whether the scratched marks were made by humans/hominids at all. If they were, whether they had any representational intent, if they did, whether they were intended to represent a female figure. It is disputed whether these can be distinguished from naturally-created lines. In 1997, American researcher Alexander Marshack argued using microscopic analysis that the grooves around the neck, however, Steven Mithen in 1999 argued that Marshacks arguments do not demonstrate that the lines are indeed intentional and that if they were that they were intended to represent a female figure. However, some of the abrasions are not necessarily consistent with a use of the object. Because it was found two layers of ash, it has been dated by tephrochronology to at least 230,000 years before the present. If the artifact was intended to replicate a female figure, it would be the earliest example of art in the archaeological record. Rather than being made by humans, it would have been made by Homo erectus, hunter-gatherers. Venus Figures from the Stone Age, Russia, Ukraine, israel Antiquities Authority National Treasures page Originsnet. org
13.
Synagogue
–
A synagogue, also spelled synagog, is a Jewish house of prayer. Synagogues have a hall for prayer, and may also have smaller rooms for study and sometimes a social hall. Some have a room for Torah study, called the beith midrash beis medrash —בית מדרש. Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for the purpose of prayer, Tanakh reading, study and assembly, halakha holds that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever ten Jews assemble. Worship can also be carried out alone or with fewer than ten people assembled together, however, halakha considers certain prayers as communal prayers and therefore they may be recited only by a minyan. The synagogue does not replace the long-since destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, israelis use the Hebrew term beyt knesset. Jews of Ashkenazi descent have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul in everyday speech, Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal. Spanish Jews call the synagogue a sinagoga and Portuguese Jews call it an esnoga, persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the non-Hebrew term kenesa, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Arab Jews use kenis. Reform and some Conservative Jews use the word temple, the Greek word synagogue is used in English, to cover the preceding possibilities. The all-day Yom Kippur service, in fact, was an event in which the congregation both observed the movements of the kohen gadol as he offered the days sacrifices and prayed for his success. During the Babylonian captivity the Men of the Great Assembly formalized and standardized the language of the Jewish prayers, prior to that people prayed as they saw fit, with each individual praying in his or her own way, and there were no standard prayers that were recited. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, one of the leaders at the end of the Second Temple era and this contributed to the continuity of the Jewish people by maintaining a unique identity and a portable way of worship despite the destruction of the Temple, according to many historians. A synagogue dating from between 75 and 50 BCE has been uncovered at a Hasmonean-era winter palace near Jericho, more than a dozen Second Temple era synagogues have been identified by archaeologists. Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue, there is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. In fact, the influence from local religious buildings can often be seen in synagogue arches, domes. Historically, synagogues were built in the architectural style of their time. Thus, the synagogue in Kaifeng, China looked very like Chinese temples of that region and era, with its outer wall, the styles of the earliest synagogues resembled the temples of other sects of the eastern Roman Empire. The surviving synagogues of medieval Spain are embellished with mudéjar plasterwork, the surviving medieval synagogues in Budapest and Prague are typical Gothic structures
14.
Suriname
–
Suriname, officially known as the Republic of Suriname, is a sovereign state on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, at just under 165,000 square kilometers, it is the smallest country in South America. Suriname has a population of approximately 566,000, most of live on the countrys north coast, in and around the capital and largest city. Long inhabited by cultures of indigenous tribes, Suriname was explored and contested by European powers before coming under Dutch rule in the late 17th century. In 1954, the country one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its indigenous peoples have been active in claiming land rights and working to preserve their traditional lands. Suriname is considered to be a culturally Caribbean country, and is a member of the Caribbean Community, while Dutch is the official language of government, business, media, and education, Sranan, an English-based creole language, is a widely used lingua franca. Suriname is the territory outside Europe where Dutch is spoken by a majority of the population. The people of Suriname are among the most diverse in the world, spanning a multitude of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. This area was occupied by cultures of indigenous peoples long before European contact, remnants of which can be found in petroglyph sites at Werehpai. The name Suriname may derive from a Taino indigenous people called Surinen, British settlers, who founded the first European colony at Marshalls Creek along the Suriname River, spelled the name as Surinam. When the territory was taken over by the Dutch, it part of a group of colonies known as Dutch Guiana. The official spelling of the countrys English name was changed from Surinam to Suriname in January 1978, a notable example is Surinames national airline, Surinam Airways. The older English name is reflected in the English pronunciation, /ˈsʊrᵻnæm/ or /ˈsʊrᵻnɑːm/, in Dutch, the official language of Suriname, the pronunciation is, with the main stress on the third syllable and a schwa terminal vowel. Indigenous settlement of Suriname dates back to 3,000 BC, the largest tribes were the Arawak, a nomadic coastal tribe that lived from hunting and fishing. They were the first inhabitants in the area, the Carib also settled in the area and conquered the Arawak by using their superior sailing ships. They settled in Galibi at the mouth of the Marowijne River, while the larger Arawak and Carib tribes lived along the coast and savanna, smaller groups of indigenous peoples lived in the inland rainforest, such as the Akurio, Trió, Warrau, and Wayana. Beginning in the 16th century, French, Spanish, and English explorers visited the area, a century later, Dutch and English settlers established plantation colonies along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains
15.
Jewish
–
The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
16.
Jews of Yemen
–
Yemenite Jews or Yemeni Jews are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen. The term may refer to the descendants of the Yemenite Jewish community. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the majority of Yemens Jewish population was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution throughout Yemen, most Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while small communities are found in the United States, only a handful remain in Yemen. The few remaining Jews experience intense, and at times violent, Yemenite Jews have a unique religious tradition that marks them out as separate from Ashkenazi, Sephardi and other Jewish groups. Some Jewish families have preserved traditions relating to their tribal affiliation, in Yemen, for example, some Jews trace their lineage to Judah, others to Benjamin, while yet others to Levi and Reuben. Of particular interest is one distinguished Jewish family of Yemen who traced their lineage to Bani, one of the sons of Peretz, there are numerous accounts and traditions concerning the arrival of Jews in various regions in Southern Arabia. One tradition suggests that King Solomon sent Jewish merchant marines to Yemen to prospect for gold, another legend says that Yemeni tribes converted to Judaism after the Queen of Shebas visit to king Solomon. The Sanaite Jews have a tradition that their ancestors settled in Yemen forty-two years before the destruction of the First Temple and it is said that under the prophet Jeremiah some 75,000 Jews, including priests and Levites, traveled to Yemen. Another legend states that when Ezra commanded the Jews to return to Jerusalem they disobeyed, according to this legend, as a punishment for this hasty action Ezra was denied burial in Israel. As a result of local tradition, which can not be validated historically, it is said that no Jew of Yemen gives the name of Ezra to a child. The Yemenite Jews claim that Ezra cursed them to be a people for not heeding his call. This seems to have come true in the eyes of some Yemenites, however, some Yemenite sages in Israel today emphatically reject this story as myth, if not outright blasphemy. Archaeological records referring to Judaism in Yemen started to appear during the rule of the Himyarite Kingdom, various inscription in Musnad script in the second century CE refer to constructions of synagogues approved by Himyarite Kings. According to local legends, the kingdoms aristocracy converted to Judaism in the 6th century CE, the Christian missionary, Theophilos, who came to Yemen in the mid-fourth century, complained that he had found great numbers of Jews. By 380 A. D, Himyarites religious practices have undergone fundamental changes, the inscriptions were no longer addressed to El Maqah or Athtar, but to a single deity called Rahman. Debate among scholars continues as to whether the Himyarite monotheism was influenced by Judaism or Christianity. Jews became especially numerous and powerful in the part of Arabia, a rich and fertile land of incense and spices and a way station on the routes to Africa, India
17.
Prayer niche
–
Mihrab is a semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla, that is, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca and hence the direction that Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a mihrab appears is thus the qibla wall, Mihrabs should not be confused with the minbar, which is the raised platform from which an Imam addresses the congregation. The word is derived from the verb ḥariba, so miḥrāb would mean battlefield or place of fight. Some scholars have suggested that the word is from the Ethiopian mekʷerab, the word mihrab originally had a non-religious meaning and simply denoted a special room in a house, a throne room in a palace, for example. The Fath al-Bari, on the authority of others, suggests the mihrab is the most honorable location of kings and the master of locations, the front and the most honorable. The Mosques in Islam, in addition to Arabic sources, cites Theodor Nöldeke, the term was subsequently used by the Islamic prophet Muhammad to denote his own private prayer room. The room additionally provided access to the adjacent mosque, and the Prophet would enter the mosque through this room. This original meaning of mihrab – i. e. as a room in the house – continues to be preserved in some forms of Judaism where mihrabs are rooms used for private worship. In the Quran, the word refers to a sanctuary/place of worship. The sign was however just a sign on the wall, eventually, the niche came to be universally understood to identify the qibla wall, and so came to be adopted as a feature in other mosques. A sign was no longer necessary, the Quranic passage that refers to a mihrab – then he came forth to his people from the sanctuary/place of worship – is inscribed on or over some mihrabs. Today, Mihrabs vary in size, are usually ornately decorated, in exceptional cases, the mihrab does not follow the qibla direction. One example is the Mezquita of Córdoba, Spain that points south instead of southeast, among the proposed explanations, there is the localization of the ancient Roman cardo street besides the old temple the Mezquita was built upon. Another is the Masjid al-Qiblatayn, or the Mosque of the Two Qiblas and this is where the Prophet Muhammad received the command to change the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, thus has two prayer niches. In the 21st Century the mosque was renovated, and the old prayer niche facing Jerusalem was removed, and the one facing Mecca was left
18.
Shrine of the Book
–
The Shrine of the Book, a wing of the Israel Museum in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947–56 in 11 caves in and around the Wadi Qumran. Initially, it was intended to build a home for the scrolls on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University, adjoining the Jewish National, the building was constructed in 1965, funded by the family of David Samuel Gottesman, a Hungarian-Jewish philanthropist. The building was designed by Armand Phillip Bartos, Frederick John Kiesler and Gezer Heller over a period of seven years, the shrine is built as a white dome, covering a structure placed two-thirds below the ground, that is reflected in a pool of water that surrounds it. Across from the dome is a black basalt wall. As the fragility of the scrolls makes it impossible to display all on a continuous basis, after a scroll has been exhibited for 3–6 months, it is removed from its showcase and placed temporarily in a special storeroom, where it rests from exposure. In 2013, the Bank of Israel released an Israeli bullion coin dedicated to the Shrine of the Book, tourism in Israel List of museums in Israel Culture of Israel Meir Ronen, Keepers of the Scrolls, The Jerusalem Post
19.
Dead Sea Scrolls
–
The caves are located about two kilometres inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name. The consensus is that the Qumran Caves Scrolls date from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE. Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus and continuing until the First Jewish–Roman War, supporting the radiocarbon and paleographic dating of the scrolls. In the larger sense, the Dead Sea Scrolls include manuscripts from additional Judaean Desert sites, most of the texts are written in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic, and a few in Greek. If discoveries from the Judean desert are included, Latin and Arabic can be added, most texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus, and one on copper. Owing to the condition of some of the scrolls, not all of them have been identified. The practice of storing worn-out sacred manuscripts in earthenware vessels buried in the earth or within caves is related to the ancient Jewish custom of Genizah. The initial discovery, by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib, his cousin Juma Muhammed, the shepherds discovered seven scrolls housed in jars in a cave near what is now known as the Qumran site. Trever reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the Bedouin, edh-Dhibs cousin noticed the caves, but edh-Dhib himself was the first to actually fall into one. He retrieved a handful of scrolls, which Trever identifies as the Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary, and the Community Rule, none of the scrolls were destroyed in this process, despite popular rumor. The Bedouin kept the scrolls hanging on a tent pole while they figured out what to do with them, at some point during this time, the Community Rule was split in two. The Bedouin first took the scrolls to a dealer named Ibrahim Ijha in Bethlehem, Ijha returned them, saying they were worthless, after being warned that they might have been stolen from a synagogue. Undaunted, the Bedouin went to a market, where a Syrian Christian offered to buy them. A sheikh joined their conversation and suggested they take the scrolls to Khalil Eskander Shahin, Kando, the Bedouin and the dealers returned to the site, leaving one scroll with Kando and selling three others to a dealer for 7 GBP. The original scrolls continued to change hands after the Bedouin left them in the possession of a party until a sale could be arranged. In 1947 the original seven scrolls caught the attention of Dr. John C, in March the 1948 Arab-Israeli War prompted the move of some of the scrolls to Beirut, Lebanon, for safekeeping. On 11 April 1948, Millar Burrows, head of the ASOR, early in September 1948, Metropolitan bishop Mar Samuel brought some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired to Professor Ovid R. Sellers, the new Director of ASOR. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after their discovery, scholars had yet to locate the cave where the fragments had been found
20.
Masada
–
Masada is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau, akin to a mesa. It is located on the edge of the Judaean Desert. Herod the Great built palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE, Masada is one of Israels most popular tourist attractions. The cliff of Masada is, geologically speaking, a horst, as the cliffs on the east edge of Masada are about 400 m high, and the cliffs on the west are about 90 m high, the natural approaches to the cliff top are very difficult to navigate. The top of the plateau is flat and rhomboid-shaped, about 550 m by 270 m. Three narrow, winding paths led from below up to fortified gates, almost all historical information about Masada comes from the first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus. Josephus writes that the site was first fortified by Alexander Jannaeus in the first century BCE, Herod the Great captured it in the power struggle that followed the death of his father Antipater. It survived the siege of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II Mattathias, no Hasmonean-period building remains could be identified during archaeological excavations at Masada. According to Josephus, between 37 and 31 BCE, Herod the Great built a fortress on the plateau as a refuge for himself in the event of a revolt. In 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels, the Sicarii, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, additional members of the Sicarii fled Jerusalem and settled on the mountaintop after slaughtering the Roman garrison. According to Josephus, the Sicarii were an extremist Jewish splinter group antagonistic to a grouping of Jews referred to as the Zealots. Josephus said that the Sicarii raided nearby Jewish villages including Ein Gedi, in 73 CE, the Roman governor of Iudaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, headed the Roman legion X Fretensis and laid siege to Masada. The Roman legion surrounded Masada, built a wall and then a siege ramp against the western face of the plateau. According to Dan Gill, geological investigations in the early 1990s confirmed earlier observations that the 114 m high assault ramp consisted mostly of a spur of bedrock. The ramp was complete in the spring of 73, after two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. The Romans employed the X Legion and a number of units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000. A giant siege tower with a ram was constructed and moved laboriously up the completed ramp. Originally, Jewish rebels on top of Masada threw stones at those building and constructing the ramp, to counter this tactic, the Romans put captured Jewish prisoners from previously conquered towns to work at the ramp
21.
Teddy Kollek
–
Theodor Teddy Kollek was an Israeli politician who served as the mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, and founder of the Jerusalem Foundation. Kollek was re-elected five times, in 1969,1973,1978,1983 and 1989, after reluctantly running for a seventh term in 1993 at the age of 82, he lost to Likud candidate and future Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert. During his tenure, Jerusalem developed into a city, especially after its reunification in 1967. He was once called the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod, theodore Kollek was born in Nagyvázsony,120 km from Budapest, Hungary as Kollek Tivadar. His parents named him after Theodor Herzl, the family moved to Vienna in 1918. Growing up in the Austrian capital city, Kollek came to share his father Alfréds Zionist convictions, in 1935, three years before the Nazis seized power in Austria, the Kollek family immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. In 1937, he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Ein Gev and that same year he married Tamar Schwarz. They had two children, a son, the film director Amos Kollek, and a daughter, Osnat and he succeeded Reuven Zaslani and preceded Zeev Sherf in this function, and was carrying out the Jewish Agencys policy of assisting the British in fighting these groups. In 1942 Kolleck was appointed the Jewish Agencys deputy head of intelligence, between January 1945 and May 1946 he was the Agencys chief external liaison officer in Jerusalem and was in contact with MI5s main representative as well as members of British Military Intelligence. On 10 August 1945 he revealed to MI5 the location of a secret Irgun training camp near Binyamina, twenty-seven Irgun members were arrested in the raid that followed. During World War II, Kollek tried to represent Jewish interests in Europe on behalf of the Jewish Agency, in 1947–48, he represented the Haganah in Washington, where he assisted in acquiring ammunition for Israel’s then-fledgling army. Kollek became an ally of David Ben-Gurion, serving in the latter’s governments from 1952 as the director general of the prime minister’s office. In 1965 Teddy Kollek succeeded Mordechai Ish-Shalom as Mayor of Jerusalem, on his motivations for seeking the mayor’s office in Jerusalem, Kollek once recalled, I got into this by accident I was bored. When the city was united, I saw this as an historic occasion, to take care of it and show better care than anyone else ever has is a full life purpose. I think Jerusalem is the one element in Jewish history. A body can live without an arm or a leg, not without the heart and this is the heart and soul of it. During his tenure Jerusalem developed into a city, especially after its reunification in 1967 He was often called “the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod. ”Kollek was re-elected five times, in 1969,1973,1978,1983. In a reluctant seventh bid for mayor in 1993, Kollek, aged 82, in the Six-Day War of 1967, East Jerusalem, which had been under Jordanian control since 1948, was taken over by Israel
22.
Land of Israel
–
The Land of Israel is the traditional Jewish name for an area of indefinite geographical extension in the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible, with mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the land is referred as from Dan to Beersheba. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to the descendants of Abram, abrams name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abrahams grandson. During the mandatory period the term Eretz Yisrael or the Land of Israel was part of the official Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine, official Hebrew documents used the Hebrew transliteration of the word “Palestine” פלשתינה followed always by the two initial letters of Eretz Yisrael, א״י Aleph-Yod. The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, Ezekiel, though generally preferring the phrase soil of Israel, employs eretz israel twice, respectively at Ezekiel 40,2 and Ezekiel 47,18. According to Anita Shapira, the term Eretz Yisrael was a term, vague as far as the exact boundaries of the territories are concerned. The Hebrew Bible provides three specific sets of borders for the Promised Land, each with a different purpose. And to their descendants after them, whilst Numbers 34, 1–15 describes the Land of Canaan which is allocated to nine, the expression Land of Israel is first used in a later book,1 Samuel 13,19. It is defined in detail in the exilic Book of Ezekiel as a land where both the tribes and the strangers in midst, can claim inheritance. The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarch Jacob, deriving from the name Israel, other designations that came to be associated with the Jewish people have included the Children of Israel or Israelite. The term Land of Israel occurs in one episode in the New Testament, the section in which it appears was written as a parallel to the earlier Book of Exodus. The passage describes the area as the land of the ten named ancient peoples living there. Genesis gives the border with Egypt as Nahar Mitzrayim – nahar in Hebrew denotes a river, never a wadi. Only the Red Sea and the Euphrates are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the land promised to the Israelites. The Red Sea corresponding to Hebrew Yam Suf was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea, thus the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the borders described
23.
James S. Snyder
–
Snyder served as the Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum from 1997-2016. In 2017, he became Director Emeritus and International President for the Museums worldwide activities, under Snyders direction, the Museum acquired more than 55,000 individual objects, works of art, and collections. From 1986 to 1996, Snyder served as Deputy Director of The Museum of Modern Art, during his tenure, he oversaw the Museum’s $60-million,350, 000-square-foot expansion, which was completed in 1984. He also had significant organizational responsibility for major international loan exhibitions as Pablo Picasso, A Retrospective and Henri Matisse. Snyder is a graduate of Harvard University, a Loeb Fellow of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, in 2006, Snyder was awarded the Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana of the Republic of Italy. In 2010, he received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic, Snyder co-authored Museum Design, Planning and Building for Art in 1993, and he authored the book Renewed, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem in 2011 and 2015. ARTINFO Pushing the Past Forward, A Conversation with Israel Museum Director James Snyder, accessed October 1,2011 Israel Museum Director Named One of 50 Most Influential People in the Art World in 2010. Accessed October 2,2011 Harvard Magazine
24.
Museum of Modern Art in New York
–
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is identified as one of the largest and most influential museums of modern art in the world. The MoMA Library includes approximately 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, over 1,000 periodical titles, the archives holds primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and they became known variously as the Ladies, the daring ladies and the adamantine ladies. They rented modest quarters for the new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7,1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. At the time, it was Americas premier museum devoted exclusively to art. One of Abbys early recruits for the staff was the noted Japanese-American photographer Soichi Sunami. Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees, Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr, under Barrs guidance, the museums holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne. Abbys husband was opposed to the museum and refused to release funds for the venture. Nevertheless, he donated the land for the current site of the museum, plus other gifts over time. During that time it initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, the museum also gained international prominence with the hugely successful and now famous Picasso retrospective of 1939–40, held in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. In its range of presented works, it represented a significant reinterpretation of Picasso for future art scholars, Boy Leading a Horse was briefly contested over ownership with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1941, MoMA hosted the exhibition, Indian Art of the United States. His brother, David Rockefeller, also joined the board of trustees in 1948. David subsequently employed the noted architect Philip Johnson to redesign the garden and name it in honor of his mother
25.
Alfred Mansfeld
–
Alfred Mansfeld was an Israeli architect. Mansfeld was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1912, while still a child, he moved with his family to Berlin, Germany. In 1935, he emigrated to Mandate Palestine, in 1949, Mansfied joined the faculty of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he taught for over forty years and was Dean of Faculty of Architecture from 1954 to 1956. Mansfield was the partner in the Haifa firm of Mansfeld-Kehat Architects, which he founded in 1935. He died on 15 March 2004, at his home, designed by him, in central Carmel, Haifa, in 1966, he won the Israel Prize, in architecture, jointly with Dora Gad, with whom he had designed the interior of Israel Museum. In 1969, he received the Gold Plaquette for Foreign Architects from the Association of German Architects, in 1971, he was elected member of the Berlin Academy. In 1976, he was awarded the Rechter Prize, for planning the Stella Maris neughbourhood in Haifa, in 1983, he was elected an honorary member of the Paris Academy. In 2001, he received a mention from the Architects Association. List of Israel Prize recipients Al Mansfeld, Architect
26.
James Carpenter (artist)
–
James Carpenter is an American light artist and designer. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in sculpture in 1972 and he works at James Carpenter Design Associates. Carpenter was selected to design new public spaces and visitor amenities for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and he was also a member of the 2004 class of MacArthur Fellows
27.
Anish Kapoor
–
Sir Anish Kapoor, CBE RA, is a British sculptor. Born in Bombay, Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art. He represented Britain in the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, when he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize, in 1991, he received the Turner Prize and in 2002 received the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Kapoor received a knighthood in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to visual arts and he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Oxford in 2014. In 2012, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government which is Indias third-highest civilian award, an image of Kapoor features in the British cultural icons section of the newly designed British passport in 2015. In 2016, he was announced as a recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace and he owns exclusive rights to use Vantablack for artistic purposes. Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay, India, to a Hindu father, according to Kapoor, his mother had an Indian-Jewish upbringing, her father being the cantor of the synagogue in Pune. At this time, Baghdadi Jews constituted the majority of the Jewish community in Mumbai and his father, from a Hindu Punjabi family, was a hydrographer in the Indian Navy. Kapoor is the brother of Canada-based academic Ilan Kapoor, Kapoor attended The Doon School, an all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, then in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. He is said to have hated his time at Doon, in 1971–1973, he travelled to Israel with one of his two brothers, initially living on a kibbutz. He began to study engineering, but had trouble with mathematics. In Israel, he decided to become an artist, in 1973, he left for Britain to attend Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art and Design. There he found a model in Paul Neagu, an artist who provided a meaning to what he was doing. Kapoor went on to teach at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1979 and in 1982 was Artist in Residence at the Walker Art Gallery and he has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s. Anish Kapoor became known in the 1980s for his geometric or biomorphic sculptures made using materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment. These early sculptures are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured, using powder pigment to define, while making the pigment pieces, it occurred to me that they all form themselves out of each other. So I decided to give them a title, A Thousand Names, implying infinity. The powder works sat on the floor or projected from the wall, the powder on the floor defines the surface of the floor and the objects appear to be partially submerged, like icebergs
28.
Samuel Bronfman
–
Samuel Bronfman, CC was a Canadian businessman and philanthropist. He founded Distillers Corporation Limited, and is a member of the Canadian Jewish Bronfman family, Samuel Bronfman was born in Soroki, Bessarabia, then part of Imperial Russia, one of eight children of Mindel and Yechiel Bronfman. He and his parents were Jewish refugees of Czarist Russias anti-Semitic pogroms and they soon moved to Brandon, Manitoba. A wealthy family, they were accompanied by their rabbi and two servants, soon Yechiel learned that tobacco farming, which had made him a wealthy man in his homeland, was incompatible with the cold Canadian climate of that region. Yechiel was forced to work as a laborer for the Canadian Northern Railway, Yechiel and his sons then started making a good living selling firewood and began a trade in frozen whitefish to earn a winter income. Eventually they turned to trading horses, a venture through which they involved in the hotel. In 1903, the family bought a business, and Samuel, noting that much of the profit was in alcoholic beverages. He founded the Distillers Corporation in Montreal in 1924, specializing in cheap whiskey, on June 21,1922, Bronfman married Saidye Rosner, with whom he had four children, Aileen Mindel Minda Bronfman de Gunzburg, Phyllis Lambert, Edgar Miles Bronfman, Charles Rosner Bronfman. Bronfmans Distillers Corporation acquired Joseph E, Seagram & Sons of Waterloo, Ontario, from the heirs of Joseph Seagram in 1928. Bronfman eventually built an empire based on the appeal of brand names developed previously by Seagram—including Calvert, Dewars and his renamed company, Seagram Co. Ltd. became an international distributor of alcoholic beverages, and a diversified conglomerate which included an entertainment branch. In 1980, the Bronfman heirs sold the Texas Pacific Oil holdings to Sun Oil Co. for $2.3 billion, the Seagram assets have since been acquired by other companies, notably The Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, and Pernod Ricard. In 1952, he established the Samuel and Sadie Bronfman Family Foundation, Bronfman was President of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1939 to 1962, and he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967. In 1971, he helped to establish the Bronfman Building at McGill University, the building was named in his honour as appreciation for his donation to the university. The Bronfman Archaeology Wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, is named for Bronfman, mordecai Richlers 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here is largely based on the life of Samuel Bronfman
29.
Pilate stone
–
The Pilate stone is a damaged block of carved limestone with a partially intact inscription attributed to, and mentioning, Pontius Pilate, a prefect of the Roman province of Judaea from AD 26–36. It was discovered at the site of Caesarea Maritima in 1961. The artifact is particularly significant because it is a find of an authentic 1st-century Roman inscription mentioning the name Pontius Pilatus. It is contemporary to Pilates lifetime, and accords with what is known of his reported career, Pilate probably travelled to Jerusalem, the central city of the provinces Jewish population, only as often as necessary. The Pilate stone is located at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Replica castings can be found at the Archaeological Museum in Milan, Italy and it has been deemed authentic because it was discovered in the coastal town of Caesarea, which was the capital of Iudaea Province during the time Pontius Pilate was Roman governor. The artifact is a fragment of the inscription of a later building, probably a temple. The theatre is located in a town that was called Caesarea Maritima in the city of Caesarea-on-the-Sea. An overview of the Pilate Stone
30.
Heliodorus (minister)
–
Heliodorus was a legate of Seleucus IV Philopator c.187 BC –175 BC. Around 178 BC Seleucus sent Heliodorus to Jerusalem to collect money to pay the Romans, there may be a reference to this in Daniel 11,20, He will send out a tax collector to maintain the royal splendor. 2 Maccabees 3, 21-28 reports that Heliodorus entered the Temple in Jerusalem in order to take its treasure,2 Maccabees 3, 34-36 records that Heliodorus received orders from God to proclaim to all men the majesty of Gods power. The Heliodorus stele, a Greek-language inscription of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, is dated to 178 BCE, in this stele, Seleucus informs Heliodorus that he appoints a certain Olympiodoros in charge of the temples of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia
31.
Hadrian
–
Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He is known for building Hadrians Wall, which marked the limit of Britannia. He also rebuilt the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus, philhellene in most of his tastes, he is considered by some to have been a humanist, and he is regarded as the third of the Five Good Emperors. Hadrian was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus into a Hispano-Roman family, although Italica near Santiponce is often considered his birthplace, his actual place of birth remains uncertain. It is generally accepted that he came from a family with roots in Hispania. His predecessor, Trajan, was a cousin of Hadrians father. Trajan did not designate an heir officially, but according to his wife Pompeia Plotina, Trajans wife and his friend Licinius Sura were well disposed towards Hadrian, and he may well have owed his succession to them. During his reign, Hadrian travelled to every province of the Empire. An ardent admirer of Greece, he sought to make Athens the cultural capital of the Empire and he used his relationship with his Greek lover Antinous to underline his philhellenism, and this led to the establishment of one of the most popular cults of ancient times. Hadrian spent a deal of time with the military, he usually wore military attire and even dined. He ordered rigorous military training and drilling and made use of reports of attacks to keep the army on alert. On his accession to the throne, Hadrian withdrew from Trajans conquests in Mesopotamia, Assyria and Armenia, late in his reign he suppressed the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judaea, renaming the province Syria Palaestina. In 138 Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius on the condition that he adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own heirs and they would eventually succeed Antoninus as co-emperors. Hadrian died the year at Baiae. In Hadrians time, there was already an established convention that one could not write a contemporary Roman imperial history for fear of competing with the emperors themselves. Information on the history of Hadrians reign comes mostly from later. A general account of his reign is Book 69 of the early 3rd century Roman History by Cassius Dio and his original Greek text of this book is lost, what survives is a brief, much later, Byzantine-era abridgment by the 11th century monk Xiphilinius. He selected from Dios account of Hadrians reign based on his religious interests
32.
Qumran
–
Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israels Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry plateau about 1.5 km from the shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli settlement. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden, caves in the sheer cliffs and beneath. The principal excavations at Qumran were conducted by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s, since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947-1956, extensive excavations have taken place in Qumran. Most were written on parchment and some on papyrus, many scholars believe the location was home to a Jewish sect, probably the Essenes. A large cemetery was discovered to the east of the site, while most of the graves contain the remains of males, some females were also discovered, though some burials may be from medieval times. Only a small portion of the graves were excavated, as excavating cemeteries is forbidden under Jewish law, over a thousand bodies are buried at Qumran cemetery. One theory is that bodies were those of generations of sectarians, the scrolls were found in a series of eleven caves around the settlement, some accessible only through the settlement. Some scholars have claimed that the caves were the permanent libraries of the sect, other scholars believe that some caves also served as domestic shelters for those living in the area. A literary epistle published in the 1990s expresses reasons for creating a community, most of the scrolls seem to have been hidden in the caves during the turmoil of the First Jewish–Roman War, although some of them may have been deposited earlier. The site of Khirbet Qumran had been known to European explorers since the 19th century, the initial attention of the early explorers was focused on the cemetery, beginning with de Saulcy in 1851. In fact, the first excavations at Qumran were of burials in the cemetery, rev. Albert Isaacs, British counsel James Finn, and photographer James Graham visited Qumran in December 1856. Isaacs stated regarding Qumrans tower, It can hardly be doubted that this formed a tower or stronghold of some kind, the situation is commanding, and well adapted for defensive operations. Finn later suggested Qumran was some ancient fort with a cistern, the British scholar Ernest William Gurney Masterman visited Qumran on several occasions between 1900 and 1901. After observing the positioning of Qumran atop a plateau overlooking the ‘Ein Feshkha Springs, Masterman also questioned why a small fort would require a graveyard of over one thousand tombs. Gustaf Dalman visited Qumran in 1914, and explicitly identified Qumran as a burg, full-scale work at the site began after Roland de Vaux and G. Lankester Harding in 1949 excavated what became known as Cave 1, the first scroll-bearing cave. A cursory surface survey that year produced nothing of interest, and this analysis yielded traces of pottery closely related to that found in Cave 1. This discovery led to excavations at the site over a period of six seasons under the direction of de Vaux
33.
Basalt
–
Basalt is a common extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of basaltic lava exposed at or very near the surface of a planet or moon. Flood basalt describes the formation in a series of basalt flows. By definition, basalt is an igneous rock with generally 45-55% silica and less than 10% feldspathoid by volume. Basalt commonly features a very fine-grained or glassy matrix interspersed with visible mineral grains, the average density is 3.0 gm/cm3. Basalt is defined by its content and texture, and physical descriptions without mineralogical context may be unreliable in some circumstances. Basalt is usually grey to black in colour, but rapidly weathers to brown or rust-red due to oxidation of its mafic minerals into hematite, although usually characterized as dark, basaltic rocks exhibit a wide range of shading due to regional geochemical processes. Due to weathering or high concentrations of plagioclase, some basalts can be quite light-coloured and these phenocrysts usually are of olivine or a calcium-rich plagioclase, which have the highest melting temperatures of the typical minerals that can crystallize from the melt. Basalt with a texture is called vesicular basalt, when the bulk of the rock is mostly solid. Gabbro is often marketed commercially as black granite and these ultramafic volcanic rocks, with silica contents below 45% are usually classified as komatiites. Agricola applied basalt to the black rock of the Schloßberg at Stolpen. Tholeiitic basalt is relatively rich in silica and poor in sodium, included in this category are most basalts of the ocean floor, most large oceanic islands, and continental flood basalts such as the Columbia River Plateau. Basalt rocks are in some cases classified after their content in High-Ti and Low-Ti varieties. High-Ti and Low-Ti basalts have been distinguished in the Paraná and Etendeka traps and it has greater than 17% alumina and is intermediate in composition between tholeiite and alkali basalt, the relatively alumina-rich composition is based on rocks without phenocrysts of plagioclase. Alkali basalt is relatively poor in silica and rich in sodium and it is silica-undersaturated and may contain feldspathoids, alkali feldspar and phlogopite. Boninite is a form of basalt that is erupted generally in back-arc basins. Ocean island basalt Lunar basalt On Earth, most basalt magmas have formed by melting of the mantle. Basalt commonly erupts on Io, the third largest moon of Jupiter, and has formed on the Moon, Mars, Venus. The crustal portions of oceanic tectonic plates are composed predominantly of basalt, produced from upwelling mantle below, the mineralogy of basalt is characterized by a preponderance of calcic plagioclase feldspar and pyroxene
34.
Frederick Kiesler
–
Austrian-American architect, theoretician, theater designer, artist and sculptor. From 1908 to 1909, Kiesler studied at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, from 1910–12, he attended painting and printmaking classes at the Akademie der bildenden Künste, both in Vienna. In July 1913, Kiesler quit the academy without having earned a diploma and he married Stefanie Frischer in 1920, and they moved to New York City in 1926, where he lived until his death. Kiesler collaborated there early on with the Surrealists, and with Marcel Duchamp, Stefi Kiesler died in September 1963. In 1964, the year before his death, Kiesler married Lillian Olinsey, his secretary and confidante. In May 1965, he traveled to Jerusalem for the inauguration of the Shrine of the Book, Kiesler was productive as a theater and art-exhibition designer in the 1920s in Vienna and Berlin. In 1920, he started a collaboration with architect Adolf Loos and, in 1923. Kiesler was friendly with many of the figures of the European avant-garde. Kiesler arranged the world premiere in Vienna on September 24,1924, of the 16-minute film Ballet mécanique, directed by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger, with Man Ray. This version, restored by Anthology Film Archives, has since been included in the documentary film compilation Unseen Cinema, Early American Avant-Garde Film 1893-1941. The music for the film was composed by George Antheil, who used it to create a separate concert piece, also named Ballet mécanique. His architectural designs include the Film Guild Cinema in New York City and, with Armand Phillip Bartos, for his object designs, such as the biomorphic furniture in his Abstract Gallery room of Peggy Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century Gallery art salon, for example. For it, he sought to dissolve the visual, real, image and he likewise pursued this approach with his “Endless House, ” exhibited in maquette form in 1958–59 at The Museum of Modern Art. The project stemmed from his displays of the 1920s and his Film Guild Cinema in New York City. Pursuing display and art-gallery work, he was a designer for Saks Fifth Avenue from 1928 to 1930. Earlier in his career in Europe, Kiesler invented the 1924 L+T radical hanging system for galleries and his unorthodox architectural drawings and plans that he called polydimensional were somewhat akin to Surrealist automatic drawings. Some models of the furniture — none of which was reproduced in numbers as intended — have been manufactured in limited quantities by various firms in Europe since 1990. The most popular has been the cast-aluminum Two-Part Nesting Table, during the 1950s, Kiesler created a series of paintings called Galaxies, which translated his vision of space into multi-paneled installations that protruded from the wall
35.
Aleppo Codex
–
The Aleppo Codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the city of Tiberias in northern Israel in the 10th century C. E. and was endorsed for its accuracy by Maimonides. Together with the Leningrad Codex, it contains the Ben-Asher masoretic tradition, the Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem purchased the codex about a hundred years after it was made. During the First Crusade, the synagogue was plundered and the codex was transferred to Egypt and it was preserved at the Karaite then Rabbanite synagogue in Old Cairo, where it was consulted by Maimonides, who described it as a text trusted by all Jewish scholars. It is rumoured that in 1375 one of Maimonides descendants brought it to Aleppo, Syria, the Codex remained in Syria for five hundred years. In 1947, rioters enraged by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine burned down the synagogue where it was kept. The Codex disappeared, then reemerged in 1958, when it was smuggled into Israel by Syrian Jew Murad Faham, on arrival, it was found that parts of the codex had been lost. The Aleppo Codex was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem received the book from Israel ben Simha of Basra sometime between 1040 and 1050. It was cared for by the brothers Hizkiyahu and Joshya, Karaite religious leaders who eventually moved to Fustat in 1050, the codex, however, stayed in Jerusalem until the latter part of that century. After the Siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the Crusaders held the codex, the Aleppo Codex website cites two letters in the Cairo Geniza that describe how the inhabitants of Ashkelon borrowed money from Egypt to pay for the books. These Judeo-Arabic letters were discovered by noted Jewish historian Shelomo Dov Goitein in 1952, the documents were transported to Egypt via a caravan led and funded by the prominent Alexandrian official Abu’l-Fadl Sahl b. Sha‘yā, who was in Ascalon for his wedding in early 1100, Judeo-Arabic inscriptions on the first page of the Codex mention the book was then transferred to the Jerusalemite synagogue in Fustat. The Aleppo codex website reveals how the book exchanged hands, blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it, and cursed be he who pawns it. It may not be sold and it may not be defiled forever and it was regarded as the communitys most sacred possession, Those in trouble would pray before it, and oaths were taken by it. The existence of this Bible was known to 20th-century scholars from the book ‘Ammudé Shesh by Shemuel Shelomo Boyarski, however, the community limited direct observation of the manuscript by outsiders, especially by scholars in modern times. Paul E. Kahle, when revising the text of the Biblia Hebraica in the 1920s and this forced him to use the Leningrad Codex instead for the third edition, which appeared in 1937. The only modern scholar allowed to compare it with a standard printed Hebrew Bible and take notes on the differences was Umberto Cassuto, who examined it in 1943. This secrecy made it impossible to confirm the authenticity of the Codex, during the 1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo, the communitys ancient synagogue was burned and the Codex was damaged, so that no more than 294 of the original 487 pages survived
36.
Holyland Model of Jerusalem
–
The Holyland Model of Jerusalem is a 1,50 scale-model of the city of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple Period. The model was moved from its location at the Holyland Hotel in Bayit VeGan, Jerusalem. The model was designed by Israeli historian and geographer Michael Avi-Yonah based on the writings of Flavius Josephus, the model includes a replica of the Herodian Temple. From 1974, Yoram Tsafrir superintended the Holyland Model of Jerusalem, in 2006, the model was relocated to the southern edge of the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden at the Israel Museum. In preparation for the move, the model was sawn into 1,000 pieces, the Holyland Hotel spent $3.5 million on the move. Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period Replicas of the Jewish Temple Israeli museum website
37.
Replicas of the Jewish Temple
–
Replicas of the Jewish Temple are scale models or authentic buildings that attempt to replicate the Temple of Solomon, Second Temple and Herods Temple in Jerusalem. In the seventeenth century, Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon of Amsterdam built a widely exhibited model of the Temple based on his understanding of the biblical specifications, another notable model was constructed by Gerhard Schott. Schotts model, knows as the Hamburg temple model, is displayed in the Hamburgmuseum in Hamburg. Conrad Schick constructed a series of replicas of the Jewish Temple and his replica of the Biblical Tabernacle was visited in Jerusalem by several crowned heads of state, toured the United Kingdom, and was exhibited at the 1873 Vienna Worlds Fair. It was purchased by the King of Württemberg, who awarded Schick a knighthood in recognition of his work, Schick built a replica of the contemporary Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock for the Ottoman Sultan. His final model, in four sections, each representing the Temple Mount as it appeared in an era, was exhibited at the St. Louis Worlds Fair of 1904. A scale model existed at the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, but was destroyed during World War II, two of Schicks models are located in the basement of the Schmidt school for girls in east Jerusalem, near the Damascus Gate. The North Visitors Center at Temple Square, in Salt Lake City, alec Garrard of Norfolk, UK, worked for 30 years creating a 1,100 scale model of Herods Temple. His model has been recognized as the most authentic version of the temple in the world, Lake Chautauqua stands in for the Mediterranean. The Holy Land Experience is a Christian theme park in Orlando, in 2009, Jews from settlements Micpe Jericho in the West Bank, began to build a life-size replica of the Temple of Jerusalem. In 2010 the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God started the construction of a replica of Solomon’s temple in São Paulo, Brazil. According to local reports, the building would be an exact replica of the ancient Temple of Solomon. The temple was inaugurated on July 2014, the mega-church seats 10,000 worshipers and stands 180 feet tall, the height of an 18-story building. The Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania a replica dating from 1922, the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania had a replica dating from the 1940s. The Mishkan Shiloh synagogue in Shilo, Mateh Binyamin is designed as a replica of the Tabernacle, in Israel, Timna Valley Park and Kibbutz Almog feature full-scale replicas. Masonic initiation rites include the reenactment of a set on the Temple Mount while it was under construction. Every Masonic Lodge, therefore, is symbolically the Temple for the duration of the degree and these may either be built into the hall or be portable. Among the most prominent are replicas of the pillars Boaz and Jachin through which every initiate has to pass, a number of churches and synagogues have been designed to evoke the Temple
38.
Jacques Lipchitz
–
Jacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor, from late 1914. In 1920 Lipchitz held his first solo exhibition, at Léonce Rosenbergs Galerie LEffort Moderne in Paris, fleeing the Nazis he came to the US and settled in New York City and eventually Hastings-on-Hudson. Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipschitz, in a Litvak family, son of a contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania. At first, under the influence of his father, he studied engineering, but soon after, supported by his mother he moved to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, living in this environment, Lipchitz soon began to create Cubist sculpture. In 1912 he exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, in 1922 he was commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania to execute five bas-reliefs. With artistic innovation at its height, in the 1920s he experimented with abstract forms he called transparent sculptures, later he developed a more dynamic style, which he applied with telling effect to bronze compositions of figures and animals. With the German occupation of France during World War II, with the assistance of the American journalist Varian Fry in Marseille, he escaped the Nazi regime and went to the United States. There, he settled in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the Third Sculpture International Exhibition held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949 and he has been identified among seventy of those sculptors in a photograph Life magazine published that was taken at the exhibition. In 1954 a Lipchitz retrospective traveled from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, in 1959, his series of small bronzes To the Limit of the Possible was shown at Fine Arts Associates in New York. Beginning in 1963 he returned to Europe for several months of year and worked in Pietrasanta. He developed a friendship with fellow sculptor, Fiore de Henriquez. In 1972 his autobiography, co-authored with H, harvard Arnason, was published on the occasion of an exhibition of his sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Jacques Lipchitz died in Capri, Italy and his body was flown to Jerusalem for burial. Hammacher, Abraham Marie, Jacques Lipchitz, His Sculpture, New York, hope, Henry Radford, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, New York, Plantin press, printed for the trustees of the Museum of Modern Art,1954. Lipchitz, Jacques, My Life in Sculpture, New York, stott, Deborah A. Jacques Lipchitz and Cubism, New York, Garland Pub. Van Bork, Bert, Jacques Lipchitz, The Artist at Work, New York, wilkinson, Alan G. Jacques Lipchitz, A Life in Sculpture, Toronto, Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario,1989. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem donated by Mr. Hanno D. Mott, interactive online version published 2010 Lipchitz, Jacques, Encyclopedia Treccani. it Jacques Lipchitz in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
39.
Gustave Courbet
–
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and his independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator, Courbets paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects, Courbets subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character, landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans. Being a prosperous farming family, anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household, Courbets sisters, Zoé, Zélie and Juliette, were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish and he went to Paris in 1839 and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he left, preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbets belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting After Dinner at Ornans. The work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state, the gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon—an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857. In 1849-50, Courbet painted Stone-Breakers, which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life, the painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey, It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then, I told them to come to my studio the next morning. Courbets work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools, instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artists own experience. He and Jean-Francois Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants, Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted controversy by addressing issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants. His work, along with that of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet and he depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. The Salon of 1850–1851 found him triumphant with The Stone Breakers, the Burial, one of Courbets most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848
40.
Alberto Giacometti
–
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was born in the canton Graubündens southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia, as the eldest of four children to Giovanni Giacometti, coming from an artistic background, he was interested in art from an early age. Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, now part of the Switzerland municipality of Bregaglia and he was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition. Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts and his brothers Diego and Bruno would go on to become artists as well. Additionally, Zaccaria Giacometti, later professor of law and chancellor of the University of Zurich grew up together with them. In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and it was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Miró, Max Ernst, Picasso, Bror Hjorth, between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitters gaze. He preferred models he was close to, his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne and this was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out, her limbs elongated. A friend of his said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you. After his marriage to Annette Arm in 1946 his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman. His paintings underwent a parallel procedure, the figures appear isolated and severely attenuated, as the result of continuous reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited, one of his models was his younger brother Diego Giacometti. A third brother, Bruno Giacometti, was a noted architect, in 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years harbored an ambition to work for a public square, he had never set foot in New York. Nor had he ever laid eyes on a skyscraper, according to his biographer James Lord. Giacomettis work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV, the commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project. In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970
.jpg)
