russia: moscow: jewish museum of tolerance

Another edition of walkabout Wednesdays: this time a visit to the Jewish Museum of Tolerance in Moscow.

This museum is new, having only been open 5 years. Wikipedia tells me the building cost was equal to $50 million, in US dollars. Wikipedia also tells me President Putin donated a month of his salary toward the building cost.

Like most Jewish facilities and properties around the world, this one has a fair amount of security. There is a separate building on the edge of the property, they look through your bag and you walk through a metal detector just to enter the property.

There was another metal detector at the entry door of the building itself. The ticket desk and coat check were easy to find and sort out.

Every visit to the museum starts with a '4D' video. The video tells you about the entire history of Judaism and the Jewish people, in both English and Russian. At one point you're spritzed with water, and your seat moves. Even if religion is of no interest to you, the historical aspect of this introduction is pretty neat.

The museum itself has a lot to see. The displays are numbered, so you can go through everything in chronological order. About half the displays have English, but it's easy enough to figure out what is being shown.

There were a lot of photos and items of various aspects of Jewish history. Items relating to specific rituals, daily life, etc... The sections dealing with WW2 and after conveniently ignore the way the Soviet government wasn't particularly nice to Soviet Jews.

Though the displays were numbered, it wasn't always obvious to me where the next number was located, so I did get lost a couple times, oops.

Since there is so much information presented, and so many photos and items to see, the museum is pretty intense. By the time I left my head was tired, but I'm glad I visited.