Bible Lands Museum

Strategically located on Givat Ram, right next door to the Israel Museum and down the street from the Knesset and the Bloomfield Museum of Science, The Bible Lands Museum houses a priceless collection and offers visitors the unique opportunity to delve into the history of the cultures of the Bible. And when it comes to history, the museum’s founding is a tale in itself. The museum was opened in 1992 by the late collector Elie Borowski as a place where he could house and display his vast personal collection. But Borowski had initially planned to open his museum in Toronto, Canada, and chose Jerusalem only after he was persuaded to do so by Batya Weiss, a woman he met at a Jerusalem hotel in 1981. The two eventually married. On display in the museum’s galleries are thousands of artifacts documenting the various peoples that occupied the region in Biblical times, including the Canaanites, the ancient Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Persians and the Philistines. The objects on display include coins, idols, pottery, weapons, statues, seals and documents. Some are more than 3,000 years old and come from all over the Near East. The museum also houses models of ancient Jerusalem and the pyramids at Giza and elucidates the Biblical “connection” of each artifact through relevant quotations from the Bible. On offer are also several innovative tours and programs for children, including summer camps, activities for the holidays and bar/bat mitzvah tours. No trip to Israel is complete without a journey through time at the Bible Lands museum.