In the Image of Abraham

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The fourth graders at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum and their parents—both Arabs and Jews—were far away from the fighting taking place elsewhere in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in late June. They had come together to celebrate the completion of a year-long coexistence project sponsored by the museum that uses its many artifacts to trace the history of the ancient Near East to help the children discover their common roots through the journey of patriarch Abraham/Ibrahim from Ur to Canaan.

The children were eager to demonstrate to their parents what they had learned, jumping to answer questions about the various exhibits they studied over the course of the program, such as the topographical map at the entrance of the museum and the model of the Sumerian Ziggurat of Nanna—a tower that the Sumerians believed their gods inhabited when they ascended to the earthly world. There was also plenty of picture-taking and an impressive display of the children’s joint artwork documenting Abraham’s journey.

The “Image of Abraham” project is in its sixth year. Students from three schools—200 children in all—met for four 4-hour meetings over the school year, during which they participated in a series of creative art workshops, interactive tours, and games guided by both Arabic and Hebrew-speaking museum staff. Groundwork was also done beforehand in the classroom to prepare the students for the project.

“This brings them, hopefully, to a balanced point for understanding what Abraham was for the Jews and what Ibrahim was in the Koran,” said Amanda Weiss, deputy director of the museum. “Together they look at the similarities and differences in their cultures. By using ancient history as a launching point for those encounters we are able to deal in a non-confrontational way with some serious contemporary issues that face us.”

Yehuda Kaplan, the museum’s education director, said he was especially excited about the parents’ involvement because he saw it as a way to extend the museum’s project into the community.

“We know that in four meetings you can only make a very small change, so our goals are very limited: [to show that] we are not so different from each other and we have things in common,” he said.

Using the museum’s extensive collection of artifacts, the children learn about the development of transportation, trade, religion and writing. “We try to understand ancient culture, what the ideas were like before science. Who is responsible for thunder? For the sun? For drought?” Kaplan said.

In addition to class work there is also plenty of time for fun activities. According to Kaplan, this is the most important aspect of the project. With a game of bingo using Jewish and Muslim traditional objects and beliefs, for example, the children also learn more about each other’s religion; after a visit to the Egyptian exhibit they are taught the meaning of some ancient hieroglyphs and can then write their name using the symbols; after learning about ancient modes of transportation, they make a simple model of an ancient wagon.

“My son knows there are other people in Jerusalem,” Imam Fakeh, a Palestinian mother, said at the end-of-the-school-year celebration of her 10-year-old son, Anas. “He knows there are Jews. [At the museum] he sees the children are the same as him. He already said: ‘I have a friend, we play.’ That is important.”

The fourth graders at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum and their parents—both Arabs and Jews—were far away from the fighting taking place elsewhere in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in late June. They had come together to celebrate the completion of a year-long coexistence project sponsored by the museum that uses its many artifacts to trace the history of the ancient Near East to help the children discover their common roots through the journey of patriarch Abraham/Ibrahim from Ur to Canaan. The children were eager to demonstrate to their parents what they had learned, jumping to answer questions about […]