Mordechai Ben-Porat
Dear Readers,
I am delighted to be the bearer of good tidings and to inform you that the
construction work to enlarge the Museum began a year ago.
The existing structure is 750 square meters in area, and the extension covers a
further 1600 square meters. Financing for the building will come from budgets of the
Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education and Culture, and the Or Yehuda
municipality.At this stage we are building an additional area of 850 square meters.
The walls are already standing and the roof has been prepared. We are now at
work to secure the funds required for the continuation of the building, and the design
of the displays in the spaces that will be added to the Museum. According to the plan
these will encompass about 18 topics from the history and culture of Babylonian
Jewry, and from the genealogy of all the Jews of Iraq to the Babylonian leadership in
the course of two anda half millennia. Exhibits will also be mounted on themes of
education, folk medicine, the communities of the Jews of Iraq, Jews of Iraq in the Far
East, Zionism and aliya, absorption in Israel, and more.
The design of the displays requires much preparation in the assembly of
research and visual material and in conducting research on the subjects of the display
by specialists and by a team of research associates and professional curators. We have
been engaged in this activity for more than two years now. You will agree that this is a
hard task, and we must invest great efforts to bring it to fruition.
In order for each and every one of you to share in this mighty enterprise, which
will perpetuate our heritage for generations, we have issued Brick Certificates. For the
sum of NIS 2000 (or $500) each, the donor will have his or her name inscribed in the
Founders’ Book, and it will be published in Nehardea in the Hebrew and the English
versions. The Brick Certificate has been artistically designed, and it may be given as a
wedding or bar-mitzvah gift. In addition to the brick, we have produced a decorated
booklet in Hebrew, which will also be published in English; it presents the plan of the
extended building and the distribution of its display halls and theactivity in the
Museum. The booklet is meant for anyone interested in memorializing their dear ones
in return for a donation starting at $5000. Donors have already come forward for five
display and workshop areas for a total sum of $500,000. I am happy tonote that
interest is ongoing, and we are now responding to additional requests for
memorialization. We are encouraged by this, and we believe that in a short time we
shall have donors for all the exhibition and activity areas in the enlarged Museum.
Dear Readers,
The greetings and praises showered upon us by visitors to the Museum encourage us
to continue investing great efforts to develop the research and the exhibitions at the
Museum. In this way we shall pass on to future generations faithful testimony to the
magnificent heritage of Babylonian Jewry, before the generation that remembers this
heritage is no more.
You too can be partners to this great endeavor! Buy a brick!
Mordechai Ben-Porat
Chairman of the Center