Israel Museum Documents Exciting 60th Anniversary With Ilan Ramon, Yitzhak Rabin

Israel Museum Documents Exciting 60th Anniversary With Ilan Ramon, Yitzhak Rabin

Israel Astronaut Ilan Ramon Diary
Photo: Joel Leyden, Israel News Agency

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem --- October 6, 2008...... As one walks across the pristine, green campus of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, you can feel that you are slowly being absorbed back into the richness of Jewish history. What you do not expect is that this colorful, vibrant history is about to shake both mind and soul.

Walking into the Blue and White Pages - Documenting the History of Israel exhibit in the Youth Wing of the Israel Museum, you immediately lay your eyes upon two worn, hanging wall flags.

One is the red and blue Union Jack of the United Kingdom, the other the Israel flag. But what makes these flags just a bit special is that this Union Jack was the last English flag to be flown in English occupied Haifa, Palestine and that the Israel flag was the first to be raised at the United Nations one day after the US recognized Israel as State in 1948.

Then as you make a right turn into the Blue and White Documents exhibits room, colorful nominations for Israel's first flag and the Israel state emblem appear. As you come to the end of that wall another dark wall with dim light falling upon the elegant, encased plastic display boxes illustrates the "Israel Heroes Wall" with a surviving diary page from Israel Astronaut Ilan Ramon and a blood stained "Song of Peace" lyrics page, one for which Yitzhak Rabin was reading from minutes before he was assassinated.

"I was trembling as I held Israel Declaration of Independence in my hand," Ido Bruno, Curator of the Blue and White Pages: Documenting the History of Israel told the Israel News Agency.

"I am a cynical person," said the 45-year-old Jerusalem born designer and curator.

"Paper and documents do not really impress me, but being face to face with such historic, exciting and important content, I could only manage to utter a 'wow'.

Looking at the Rabin document or the Ramon diary page, one cannot really say that the Israel Declaration of Independence is more or less important. But as a curator one has to make a choice as to what the audience will see. You have to make a choice. There is a line when it is a simple document or something that becomes voyeuristic? As Yigal Amir's gun for which I saw and was offered to place on display, I said I do not want this here. This is not a theme park - I do not want those props."

Bruno, who with 4 professional and dedicated staffers, are assisting to put together what will be the most powerful, cultural exhibit ever to be placed on display in Israel.

Bruno says that the Israel Museum had an idea of what the Israel National Archives wanted to show. They had approached the Israel Museum and the Museum then approached the Knesset, which decided that the historic and highly emotional exhibit should not take place in the halls of the Knesset but rather in the Israel Museum, which has easier access and better facilities for such a colorful and potent display.

Igal Zimona, the Chief Curator of the Israel Museum then initially approached Bruno for the for Blue and White Pages exhibit and shortly afterwards asked if he would also take on the responsibility as curator.

Ido says that the job of a curator is one who is placed in full responsibility for the content, concept - choosing pieces - and all the time placing content in and out of the exhibits as it slowly gives birth.

"I have worked on this Israel 60th anniversary exhibit for over 5 months while still working on 2 other exhibits at the Israel Museum," says Bruno.

With regard to the IDF US Astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon diary exhibit, Ido says that Ilan's wife Rona was given the diary by NASA which was found in a field in Texas two months after it fell to earth.

A search team had found the 37 pages sitting there and knew immediately that it came from the shuttle. The papers had a NASA cover on it. NASA then gave these personal affects to Rona Ramon. Rona then approached the Israel Museum forensics team and asked the museum if they could restore the diary. Israel Museum restorator Michal Magen spent months working on Ilan Ramon diary, painstakingly taking the delicate pages and piece by piece restored over 80 percent of the diary.

The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and then "was attacked by microorganisms and insects" in the field where it fell, said museum curator Yigal Zalmona.

"It's almost a miracle that it survived — it's incredible," Zalmona said. There is "no rational explanation" for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not, he said.

The diary took about a year to restore. It then took Israel police scientists about four more years to decipher the pages. About 80 percent of the text has been deciphered and the rest remains unreadable, he said.

Ilan Ramon, a fighter pilot for the Israel Defense Forces, was selected as a Payload Specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia by the Israeli Air Force in 1997 and approved by NASA in 1998. He reported for training at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston in July 1998 and was making his first space flight. Ramon and six other crew members were killed during a re-entry accident over Southern Texas. Ramon is a recipient of the US Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

The diary describes in fine detail Ramon's day from first waking up and brushing his teeth, to witnessing how beautiful the Earth appeared, to the many experiments he worked on and then washing himself before going to sleep. Much of diary remains personal and in the possession of his wife Rona.

"Ilan wrote his diary using three instruments. An expensive NASA pen, a simple pencil and a felt tip marker," says Bruno. The first two lasted but the words written with the felt marker were washed out by rains and weather as it laid on the ground in Texas. You can easily the Kiddush prayer for which Ilan wrote and read back to Earth in this exhibit."

Ramon diary is one of 4 people highlighted on the "Cultural Hero Wall." Av Shalom Feinberg, a freedom fighter against the Turks for the British, along with Anwar Sadat where a movie depicts his visit historic and peaceful trek to Israel. The Peace agreement, signed by Begin, Sadat and Carter. And the blood stained "Song of Peace" lyrics page that Yitzhak Rabin kept in his jacket pocket all stand next to one another.

After singing this "Song for Peace" in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin folded this lyrics page and placed
it in his jacket pocket. Minutes later a Jewish assassin's bullet murdered the war hero and peace maker.
Photo: Israel Museum

Other documents on display at the Israel Museum include the original Israel Declaration of Independence, foreign passports thrown away by immigrants as they landed in Israel, the diary of Nazi mass murderer and holocaust creator Adolf Eichmann and even an order by the Israel government revoking "lashing" prisoners as a form of modern punishment.

"We were looking for documents - as compared to conventional sculpture, paintings and archeology, seeking original documents which strengthen the link between the national archive and the Israel Museum, Bruno tell the INA.

For me personally, the most impressive piece on display is a small note that David Ben-Gurion wrote ordering as to who was to attend a State dinner. Gurion wrote that all teachers and writers were to be invited. At first he also included artists but then crossed that word out. What Ben-Gurion was saying was nothing less than paramount to what consisted of Israel culture at the time. Teachers and authors were held in the utmost esteem. Respected above all else. Today, teachers in Israel must go on strike just to secure a paycheck which can buy them food. They should be at the top. It is sad to see their change in status. Education is everything."

When asked if the recent trip and concert by former Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney was of greater cultural consequence of the present exhibit, Bruno responded: "There is no competition. They are both great and both stand on their own very special and cultural aspects."

Bruno said that the purpose of the Blue and White Pages exhibit was "to show and illustrate a deeper view of the connections between historical events and documents, and how we can learn from the processes and the connection and Israel culture today".

"This is far from being a boring exhibit where mundane papers are placed on display," said Bruno. This is no yawning experience. For each and every person who sees the exhibit their faces light up, tears swell up and fall. You can't leave this exhibit without feeling goose pimples and a sense of tremendous pride from where we all come from."

The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections, including the most extensive holdings of biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world. In just forty years, the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects thanks to a legacy of gifts and the support from its circle of patrons worldwide.

The uncontested stars of the Museum’s collection are the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world. Housed in the white and fountain sprayed Shrine of the Book, the scrolls date from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE and include books of the Hebrew Bible as well as other non-canonical texts. The Shrine of the Book also houses rare early medieval manuscripts of the Bible, an auditorium and an information and study center.

One of the most recent and exciting additions to the Israel Museum is the Second Temple Era model of Jerusalem. The model reconstructs the topography and architectural character of the city as it was prior to 66 CE, the year in which the Great Revolt against the Romans erupted, leading to the eventual destruction of the city and the Temple. Originally constructed on the grounds of Jerusalem’s Holyland Hotel, the model is now a permanent feature of the Israel Museum’s twenty-acre campus, adjacent to the Shrine of the Book.

Counted among the finest sculpture gardens of the twentieth century, the Museum's Billy Rose Art Garden, designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, is a synthesis of different cultures - those of the Far East, the Near East and the West - against the backdrop of Jerusalem’s dramatic landscape. The collection displayed in the garden includes works by the great sculptors Menashe Kadishman, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin and James Turrell, among others.

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