A new exhibition called "The Power of Words" will launch at the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem featuring 40 inspiring statements by Holocaust survivors. 

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"The world is round. Do good and God will send good back to you. Always strive to give, to respect, to contribute and to add good to the world," Holocaust survivor Smadar Nicole Shaulof, who was born in 1938 in Tunis, said. 

"I am from the generation of Holocaust survivors. We founded the State from scratch and passed this most precious gift on to the younger generation. Guard it fiercely," Meir Reichardt, who was born in 1930 in Pruszków, Poland, said.

"Continue to be young and fun as you are now. Love everyone and everyone will love you back," said Dina Peled, born in 1942 in Murafa, Ukraine. 

The opening ceremony will be attended by founder Dr. Mike Evans and president Michael Evans Jr.

Each quote includes a photograph of the survivor and a QR code that gives access to his or her personal story. The 40 statements were chosen by the members of the Dolls and Dreams group for Holocaust survivors.

Michal Fundaminsky, a therapist who works with the group, said, "We founded the group about 12 years ago to aid Holocaust survivors living in the city. , despite the suffering and difficulties that life brought to them, with a lot of wisdom, life experience, respect, and values, they managed to discern what is really important, to see and learn to appreciate the good in everything. The purpose of the exhibition, as its name 'The Power of Words' reflects, is that words can cause people to stop for a moment and make a change, and precisely in the stormy days we are going through."

Daniel Voiczek, CEO of the museum, said, "We are happy and excited to host such a unique exhibition. We have all asked ourselves many times how it is possible to survive an impossible inferno and continue to grow and strengthen in life. In my opinion, the exhibition gives us the answer to this. The members of the group, each of whom has a difficult life story, are optimistic and special people who are passionate about life are giving us a gift and it is important to hear from them what guides them in life today. It is important to note that the Friends of Zion museum works a lot on behalf of Holocaust survivors in Israel and around the world, and the exhibition is another step in this activity."

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California state lawmakers on Thursday announced $2.5 million in funding to support the expansion of Holocaust Museum LA, including for a new learning center pavilion and new programming for younger learners at the Los Angeles venue.

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The state support will allow visitor capacity to increase to 500,000 per year, including 150,000 students, by 2030, according to the museum.

"Museum space is at capacity, particularly during school hours, and requests for student tours and public workshops continue to increase," said Holocaust Museum LA CEO Beth Kean.

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King Khufu's boat is the oldest and largest wooden boat ever discovered in Egypt, and this week, it was painstakingly moved from its longstanding home next to the Great Pyramid of Giza to a nearby museum, officials said Saturday.

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The 4,600-year-old vessel, also known as the Solar Boat, founds its home in the Grand Egyptian Museum, slated to be inaugurated later this year.

Video: Reuters

"We decided to move the boat in order to protect and preserve for future generations the biggest and oldest organic artifact made of wood in the history of humanity," the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement.

It took 48 hours to move the cedar boat, which is 42 meters (138 feet) long and weighs 20 tons, to its new home. It was transported using a metal construction and a remote-controlled vehicle that were brought in especially for the project, General Supervisor Ateh Moftah said.

The boat, discovered in 1954 at the southern corner of the Great Pyramid, has been exhibited for decades at its original locaton. Egypt says the Grand Egyptian Museum, which has been under construction intermittently for 17 years, will exhibit more than 100,000 artifacts when it opens.

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Mirrors, holograms, height, elevation, levitation and much more – This is what you can feel when you visit the Museum of Illusions, which will open at the end of August in Tel Aviv.

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The idea to establish such a museum came from two Croatian entrepreneurs, Roko Zivkovic and Tomislav Pamukovic. Together with American businessman Jonathan Cooper they made the museum into an international success.

"It all started when Roko and Tomislav were on a family trip to the Science Museum in Scotland in 2015," Cooper told Israel Hayom.

"They found the museum's illusions section very interesting. So they took the general idea, worked on it for a year and a half, developing it. They built illusions in their living room, testing them. When they had enough they opened a small museum in Croatia. They spent all their saving on it, but it was a success from the very beginning.

"In the first few weeks tens of thousands of visitors arrived, as did I with my family. We enjoyed it so much we realized we had to help expand it. It was clear to me it was a concept that would work everywhere. We started in Vienna and Dubai, and by now we are in many cities in the world."

Q: And now it's coming to Israel.

"We are very excited about coming to Tel Aviv for the first time. I have visited Israel several times in the past, together with my wife."

Q: How does the museum function during the pandemic?

"We had to close our museums worldwide, and spent a year developing safety protocols to enable visitors to have a safe experience. No doubt, the pandemic is worrying, and the museum is adapting to it. As of now, wearing a mask is mandatory in the museum, and disinfection stations are placed everywhere. Every 10 minutes the sections are cleaned. We also added filters to the ventilation and limited the number of visitors."

Q: Which is the most popular set in the museum?

"The four-meter-long vortex tunnel. You enter by walking on a bridge in a straight line, but then suddenly the ceiling and walls around you start revolving. It's as if you are spinning. There is also a room where depending on where you stand your height varies.

"In some parts, it seems like you are very short, in others, you are a giant. This is one of the sets that children love the most, because they can find angles in which they look huge and their parents tiny."

Q: Is there an age limit in the museum?

"The range is very wide. From 3 to 99. About 70% of our visitors are adults, and many teenagers with friends, and also families. It truly suits everyone."

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Haredim who wish to lead Israeli groups on tours of former Nazi concentration camps will now have a course specificaly tailored for their community.

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High-school trips to Poland to visit Nazi concentration and labor camps are a well-established tradition in Israel. In recent years, the ultra-Orthodox sector has also begun expressing interest in the subject, which created the need for more Haredi teachers and guides.

The Testimony House Holocaust museum in Nir Galim, in south-central Israel, took it upon itself to fill the need, in partnership with the Michlalah Jerusalem College and Israel Experience offering a course that caters to Haredim.

"The new project will increase the number of visitors to important sites and help keep the memory of the Holocaust alive for generations to come," Testimony House CEO Rachel Rosenman said.

"With fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors among us, the importance of Holocaust education becomes even more crucial. Our ultimate goal is to integrate a wide range of sectors into keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive," Rosenman said.

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Israel's premier museum for Islamic art has scrapped the planned auction of scores of rare and precious items after public outcry over the attempted sale, which had been expected to fetch millions of dollars from wealthy private collectors.

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In a settlement struck Wednesday, the Sotheby's auction house agreed to return 268 items from London back to the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem.

The agreement ends a saga that drew broad condemnation and threatened to gut one of Israel's prized public art collections. Art experts criticized the attempted sale to private collectors, saying it had been hidden from the public and violated the museum's founding mission to edify the Israeli public about the Islamic world through art.

As part of the arrangement, the Al Thani Collection Foundation, an art foundation funded by a descendent of the ruling family of the energy-rich Gulf Arab state of Qatar, "will generously provide an annual sponsorship to the LA Mayer Museum for Islamic Art" for 10 years, while one of the Islamic Art Museum's pieces will be given on long-term loan to the Al Thani Collection's gallery at the Hotel de la Marine in Paris.

Haaretz said that Sotheby's would receive a 2 million pound cancellation fee. Neither Sotheby's nor the museum would provide details on the fee or the annual funding for the museum, though the auction house said "given the circumstances, Sotheby's reduced its withdrawal fees."

The item to be loaned is an intricately decorated, 11th-century silver jug, part of a hoard of silver objects discovered in the early 20th century near Nivahand, in northeastern Iran. The item was purchased early last century by art collector Ralph Harari, who later sold it to the museum's founder, Vera Salomons.

An Arabic inscription beneath a frieze of running animals on the jug reads: "Perfect blessing, lasting wealth, abundant happiness and overall security to its owner." It was not one of the items originally up for auction at Sotheby's in October sale.

Israel and Qatar do not have formal diplomatic relations, but contacts exist to facilitate Qatar's transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Sotheby's said it had facilitated the cooperation between the Islamic Art Museum and the Al Thani Collection.

The Islamic Art Museum and the Hermann de Stern Foundation, which had initiated the Sotheby's auction, welcomed the agreement, saying it "will ensure the continued operation of the museum over time."

"This is a truly momentous final outcome and we are thrilled to be partnering with The Al Thani Collection Foundation in this way to further our shared aims of increasing cultural exchange, while allowing the museum to continue to enhance art and culture for the benefit of the Israeli public and art lovers," the museum and the foundation said in a joint statement.

The Al Thani Collection said it was "very pleased to play a part in the survival of a unique institution that makes a meaningful difference to the communities around it."

The items from the museum's collection, including several centerpiece objects and prized antique watches, were slated for auction at Sotheby's in October. The Hermann de Stern Foundation, a Liechtenstein-based trust that funds the bulk of the museum's budget, said the sale was aimed at covering the cost of maintaining the institution. It insisted that it had the legal right to sell the items.

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The Hashava Foundation, an Israeli art theft prevention organization, petitioned the Supreme Court in November to halt the auction. It said the sale was "in gross violation" of Israel's laws governing museums and antiquities, and that it would cause "irreversible damage and major loss to the general public."

Meir Heller, Hashava's founder, said the organization was proud that the petition "achieved its aim and brought about the return of this rare and precious collection to Israel and its exhibition for the public."

The museum was established in the 1960s by Vera Frances Bryce Salomons, the scion of a British-Jewish aristocratic family who died in 1969, and named for Leo Arie Mayer, a prominent scholar of the Middle East. It is home to thousands of Islamic artifacts dating from the 7th to the 19th centuries. It also has a collection of antique watches handed down by the Salomons family, including dozens by the famed Parisian horologist Abraham-Louis Breguet. His timepieces adorned European royalty in the 17th and 18th centuries, including Marie Antoinette.

Among the items that were to be auctioned were a 15th-century Ottoman helm inlaid in silver calligraphy, a 12th-century bowl depicting a Persian prince and a collection of antique watches, including three designed by Breguet.

The removal of the artwork drew public outcry by President Reuven Rivlin, Culture Minister Hili Tropper, museum curators and academics, and forced the postponement and eventual halt to the auction.

"I am delighted that all our strenuous efforts to preserve intact the entirety of the collection of the L.A. Mayer Museum have come to such a successful conclusion," Tropper said, saying the Al Thani Collection Foundation's "generosity is a great tribute to the spirit of cross-cultural cooperation."

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From Queen Salome to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, Tel Aviv's newly revamped Museum of the Jewish People attempts the ambitious undertaking of bringing almost 3,000 years of Jewish history and tradition under a single roof.

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The museum – formerly known as Beit Hatfutsot and newly branded as ANU, Hebrew for "We" – reopened to visitors this week after more than a decade of renovations costing $100 million.

Its exhibition space has tripled, making it the largest Jewish museum in the world, officials say. Its old galleries with dioramas and models from when it first opened in 1978 have given way to cutting-edge exhibits with interactive touchscreens and original artwork.

Close to a third of the renovation was financed by the Nadav Foundation of Russian-Israeli Leonid Nevzlin, a former oil magnate. Another $52 million came from other US-based philanthropists and foundations, and $18 million from the Israeli government. Nevzlin's daughter Irina, the wife of Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, serves as chair of the museum's board of directors.

The refurbished museum adopts a fresh approach to telling the story of the Jewish people, chief curator Orit Shaham-Gover said. It focuses on the diversity of Jewish culture and the accomplishments of the Jewish people, not just its tragedies, she said.

"Everyone walking in here needs to see themselves regardless of gender, denomination, ethnic background," the museum's CEO Dan Tadmor said. "This is our story and you need to feel part of it."

Scattered through 72,000 square feet of galleries are historical artifacts and mementos: a jawza – a type of stringed instrument – belonging to 20th-century Iraqi musicians known as the Al-Kuwaity brothers, one of late Justice Ginsburg's signature collars, a Book of Esther scroll from pre-Inquisition Spain, and a monumental carved stone from a first-century BCE synagogue on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

A major draw is the original artwork highlighting lesser-known historical figures such as Ottoman Jewish philanthropist Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi and the legendary Ethiopian warrior queen Yodit. Visitors can use a digital bracelet to capture memorable elements – from literary quotations, to recipes and family trees – and take them home by email.

Shaham-Gover, the curator, said the open-space gallery of contemporary Jews is "a celebration of life and culture and lights and colors."

"The museum is not a muted temple," she said. "It's about life. So you come here, you have sounds, you have light and colors. It's part of you."

Upon entering the main gallery, visitors encounter life-sized projections of Jews from a kaleidoscope of different affiliations and lifestyles – from Reform to ultra-Orthodox and everything in between – explaining how they define their Jewish identity.

Anat Lieberman, a museum visitor from Ramat Gan, said the presentation of people from "all colors of the rainbow" was moving, and showed that it was a museum "for the entire Jewish people."

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The memorial museum in Lithuania's former capital recounts the story of Chiune Sugihara, who was a vice-consul diplomat based at the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas during 1939-1940. Its small collection is housed in the villa that once served as the consulate.

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The brake the coronavirus pandemic slammed on international travel has put the small museum, like other cultural institutions and tourist destinations around the world, under intense economic pressure.

"Tickets sales are our main income resource. Japanese used to make up 85% of the visitors. Now, the visitors from Japan are gone, so is our income," museum director Ramunas Janulaitis said.

However, people from Gifu Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu, where Sugihara was born, raised some 30,000 euros (about $35,600) to help the museum survive the pandemic.

"We expect to raise another 40,000 (euros) in the autumn" Japanese Ambassador Shiro Yamasaki said.

Both the Soviet Union and Germany occupied Lithuania during the war. The Soviets annexed the Baltic nation, which became independent in 1990.

During his time at the consulate in Kaunas, Sugihara issued transit visas to Japan to nearly 6,000 Jewish refugees, mainly from neighboring Poland. The 10-day visas which he supplied without the approval of Japan's Foreign Ministry, enabled the refugees to escape and survive the Holocaust.

Sugihara was reassigned elsewhere in Europe, and when he returned to Japan in 1947, he was fired. He died in 1986.

Created in 1999, the museum honoring his courageous actions exhibits the life and work of Sugihara, The villa was decorated to recreate what it looked like during his time serving there. The names of Jews to whom he is known to have granted visas also are displayed.

The government in Lithuania, the southernmost Baltic country that once was the home to a large Jewish community, has declared 2020 as "the year of Chiune Sugihara."

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The presentation has been on display since November 12, 2019 at Bet Hatfutsot – Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, with the formal launch to follow in Porto, Portugal in early 2020. It will be available worldwide later on.

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"The mobility of the Capsule (mobile) Exhibit offers a unique opportunity to engage the world with the saga of Sefarad by distributing and sharing the story around the globe," the museum said in a statement. "The exhibit will serve as launching pad for educational programs in schools and other types of learning institutions, community centers, synagogues, churches, as well as a host of museums around the world.

"The exhibit is presented on panels that will be available via PDF files (portable document format) allowing delivery of the exhibit electronically across the globe. The exhibit details the narrative of Sefarad in a concise presentation of the period, from achievements to calamity; the pogroms, massacres, forced conversions and eventual exile."

According to the statement, the initiative was the brainchild of Michael Steinberger, founder and CEO of Jewish Heritage Alliance, and Itamar Kremer, who is the educational director at Beit Hatfutsot.

The design and development of the exhibit was conceived by Dr. Orit Shaham Gover, the chief curator of Beit Hatfutsot and her devoted team: Dr. Dvir Zur and Dr. Meirav Balas.

"The project is supported by strategic partners, key among them is ATP (Porto and Northern Tourism Association), represented by Mr. Rui P. Gonçalves with aid and assistance of Mrs Ruth Calvão, board member of JHA and founding member of Centro de Estudos Judaicos de Trás -os- Montes (Center for Jewish Studies in Trás-os-Montes)," the museum said. "The exhibition is endorsed by the president of the Portuguese Republic; the Portuguese Parliament, and the Spanish Jewish Network, as well as other public and private NGOs and institutions worldwide."

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The Interpretive Center of Tomar Synagogue and Abraão Zacuto Luso-Hebraic Museum in Tomar, Portugal – a little more than a 90-minute drive from the country's capital, Lisbon – was built in the 15th century.

It was abandoned until it was restored in 1921 by a Polish-born Jew, Samuel Schwarz.

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The synagogue's façade is deceivingly mundane. Inside, is a small but tall space with a multileveled domed ceiling and four pillars, representing Judaism's four matriarchs: Sarah, Rebeka, Rachel and Leah.

Schwarz, a mining engineer, documented Jewish customs in rural Portuguese locales in a 1925 book titled "New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century."

The customs had been preserved in towns like Belmonte and Trancoso by descendants of Jews who kept practicing their faith in secrecy after the Inquisition, a state-sponsored campaign of persecution that began in Spain in 1492 and reached Portugal in 1536.

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