JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv will get a new infusion of cash and become the Museum of the Jewish People.
A $25 million project to renew the museum, now called Beth Hatefusoth, was announced last week at a meeting of the museum’s international board of governors. The renewed museum will open in 2012, according to board chairman Leonid Nevzlin.
Officials said the museum will update its approach to the history of the Jewish people. The project, the culmination of a comprehensive renewal process undertaken by the Diaspora Museum in recent years, is being financed by the Israeli government, the Claims Conference, the Nadav Fund and other international donors. Teams of architects, consultants, historians and academic advisers from Israel and abroad have begun the planning and design of the museum, according to a museum news release.
“Its purpose is to convey the unique and ongoing story of the Jewish People while giving expression to a new perception about the relationship between the Jewish People and the State of Israel — the perception of one Jewish oeople, incorporating Jews living in Israel or any other place in the world," Nevzlin said. "For this reason we decided to change the name from ‘the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora’ to the ‘Museum of the Jewish People.’ ”
