Jerusalem's visual harmony

Author: By Christine Temin, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, February 15, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

It is indeed a valley, this great monument, a two and a half 2 1/2-acre hole dug into the ground. As you walk down the slope toward it , you feel like as if you're entering a network of tombs -- except that these tunnels, passageways , and rooms are all open to the sky. The walls, towering to a height of 20 to 30 feet, are made of huge hunks of stone, both smooth and rough, pale golden and rust-colored; cyclamen sprouts in their cracks. More stones crunch underfoot as you walk through the uneven terrain. On the smooth stones are carved, in Hebrew and English, the names of Jewish communities affected by the Holocaust, both the thousands that were destroyed and the few that survived. It is a tribute simple, factual, and moving.

Names also figure prominently in other parts of the Yad Vashem complex. In the Hall of Remem-brance, the names of some of the Nazi death camps are engraved on the floor. The building itself is made of boulders, with a tentlike concrete ceiling pressing down on them, admitting a sliver of light between ceiling and walls. Another light comes from the eternal flame that burns in a flame-shaped metal sculpture by Israeli artist David Palombo, who himself met a horrible death, in a 1966 motorscooter accident near his studio. His bike ran into one of the chains that Orthodox Jews stretch across roads to prevent people from driving on the Sabbath. Palombo remains a strong presence in Jerusalem, though. His jagged, cruel-looking metal gates guard the entrance to the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

There are still more names in Yad Vashem's Children's Memorial, dedicated to the 1 1/2-million children killed by the Nazis. The names and ages of victims resound through the space in a seemingly endless recorded litany. A Moshe Safdie design, this haunting building features one room where faces of children float in the air like apparitions -- their photographs have actually been printed on panels of glass -- and another room where mirrors create infinite reflections of a single candle, like spirits that refuse to die.

Among the most moving sculptures at Yad Vashem is Bernie Fink's Memorial to Jewish Soldiers, six giant boulders lined up so their inner edges form a Star of David; shooting up through the center of the star-shaped space is a long, pointed sword.

The designers of Yad Vashem, which was established by an act of the Knesset in 1953, have been wise. They could have clobbered visitors with horrific, manipulative, and ultimately numbing images; instead, they've created a monument of supreme restraint. Like the AIDS quilt or Maya Lin's Vietnam wall, Yad Vashem acknowledges both the individual and the horrifying numbers of the dead, and does so with elegance and eloquence.

It takes time to do justice to Yad Vashem's multiple buildings and monuments, and it's an experience likely to resonate in your heart and head long after you've left. ``Visiting this place is like planting a seed,'' says Jerusalem sculptor Israel Rabinovitz, who was my guide to the memorial. ``After you leave, it grows inside you.'' Rabinovitz, who dreams of making a work for Yad Vashem, visits the memorial every couple of months, the way a New York artist would routinely check out the Museum of Modern Art.

Rabinovitz's latest public piece in Jerusalem is in a courtyard of the Hadassah Hospital, which attracts visitors even if they're not sick or injured: Its stained-glass windows by Chagall are a must-see for art tourists. Rabinovitz's sculpture, a memorial to three students killed in an auto accident, is a stone tree drilled with 800 holes. The holes are all plugged with ceramic stoppers in the artist's trademark turquoise, the color of water, a precious commodity in a desert nation. In each hole is a letter of remembrance from the students' friends, families, and teachers.

Rabinovitz is also chairman of the Artists House, a remarkable organization that, while little known outside Israel, is arguably the country's most adventurous exhibition space. Housed in an 1890 architectural fantasy with crenellations and Gothic arches, it mounts a staggering schedule of shows -- 40 a year. Its director is Ruth Zadka, a passionate artists' advocate who says, ``The big question here is, why don't Israeli artists break through to an international audience?''

Answering her own question, she says, ``If you can't afford to bring international curators here, and stage big biennials, no one notices your art.'' She works to remedy that, overseeing shows that have brought visibility to Israeli artists, and that have also brought together Israeli and Palestinian artists, religious and non-religious Jews. The Artists House has a political as well as an aesthetic purpose. In its mission statement is a sentence the likes of which you'd never find in America, where artists are, overall, far less politicized than they are in Israel. ``Since the early 1980s,'' it reads, ``the Artists House has been a major trailblazer in efforts for a peaceful end to the occupation and a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.''

Noble statements aside, Zadka's provocative programming has managed to annoy Israelis across the political spectrum. Conservatives were offended by the swastika made of hair that turned up in a show last summer. Liberals were offended by the highly traditional painting on glass by David El-Kayam, a member of a prominent rabbinical family, in a show this winter.

The Artists House also partly fills the commercial gallery gap in Jerusalem, which is short on places handling good contemporary work. There are schlock shops for tourist art, and that's about it. Zadka's organization has stepped in with a ground floor sales gallery that features moderately priced, high quality work by dozens of Israeli artists.

Another good bet for good contemporary art is Artspace, which is actually Linda Zisquit's house. An American poet transplanted to Israel, Zisquit eased into art consulting when visitors kept asking where she'd gotten the works on her walls. In 1994, she started having shows in her 19th-century house in Jerusalem's picturesque German Colony; the house-turned-gallery is open to the public three days a week. The walls are hung with works like Mira Weinstein's ethereal weavings of light-catching strands of plastic; the blunt, psychologically disturbing figurative paintings of Pamela Levy; and the subtly layered landscapes of Larry Abramson.

Contemporary art plays a prominent part in the three important institutions that stand on a trio of hills in West Jerusalem: the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the Israel Museum. It's no surprise that the latter is filled with world-class art and archeology: It is, after all, the country's biggest and most comprehensive museum. It is surprising, though, and gratifying, that art is a key component of both the Knesset and the Court.

In the case of the Knesset, it's discrete works added to the rather drab and dated 1966 building -- sculptures by David Palombo outdoors and tapestries and mosaics by Marc Chagall inside. Palombo's bronze gates are sharp, jagged shapes that evoke the fences of concentration camps. Chagall, too, refers to Jewish history, but filtered through his more lyrical sensibility. Weightless figures float through his tapestries of biblical tales starting with the prophesy of Isaiah. Chagall's depiction of the moment when the lion lies down with the lamb is charmingly literal. That image of peaceful coexistence contradicts the ambience in the Knesset chamber itself, where the debate is often raucous. The seats inside this chamber where Israel's laws are enacted are arranged in the shape of a menorah: Visual symbols are a cultural key.

A quarter century younger than the Knesset, the Supreme Court is one of Israel's greatest buildings and a testament to the young country's design sophistication. Its Israeli architects, Ada Karmi-Melamede and Ram Karmi, created a subtle symbolic language where straight lines stand for law and curves for justice, reference to a verse from Psalms: ``He will lead me in the circles of justice.'' The grand stone staircase in the foyer narrows as you ascend, drawing you in. At its side edge is a thin strip of mirror that reflects the light that is one of the building's hallmarks. The formal entrance is a towering pyramid with four round windows. The courtrooms are apsidal in shape, like synagogues, and clerestories provide more overtones of religious architecture. Outside the courtrooms is a vast hallway where teak benches built into windowed bays offer a breathtaking view of Jerusalem. Set into the pavement in a cloistered courtyard is a channel of water whose churning represents the volatile nature of the law.

You can easily walk from the Knesset to the Supreme Court to the Israel Museum. Save the museum for last: It takes at least half a day to explore its surprisingly varied collections, but when museum fatigue sets in, there's a fine cafe for refreshment and respite. Besides the strengths you'd expect -- Judaica, biblical archeology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are housed in a separate building the shape of a Hershey's Kiss -- the museum has extraordinary holdings in Pre-Columbian, modern, and contemporary art. Opened in 1965, the complex is designed to look like an old Palestinian village, a series of pavilions clinging to the hillside.

The Old City of Jerusalem is just a few minutes' drive from the Israel Museum. But its congestion and noise are a world away from the museum's tranquillity. Holy to three major religions, the Old City is part sacred site and part tourist attraction. Sometimes the two parts fight. Visitors to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, thought to be the site of Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, are likely to find themselves flattened against the wall to avoid an onslaught of chanting, censor-swinging priests of different Christian denominations who don't seem to like each other any more than they like tourists. There's always a line of people waiting to enter the tiny room housing what is supposed to be Christ's tomb: On bad days, there's more pushing and shoving in line here than there is for any ride in Disney World.

The Dome of the Rock, Islam's third holiest site, is another must on the art lover's list. The Dome dazzles, both outside and in. While most buildings in the old parts of Jerusalem are crammed together, the Dome stands in regal isolation in the center of a vast plaza. Its exterior is covered in azure ceramic tiles that, on a sunny day, perfectly match the color of the Jerusalem sky. The glorious Dome has been regilded with 176 pounds of 24-carat gold, donated by Jordan's King Hussein. Inside are more exquisite mosaics, dating from several centuries. And, of course, there's the vast rock, which Jews consider to be the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, until God intervened, and Muslims consider the place from which the Prophet Mohammed rose to heaven.

Trying to determine the opening hours of the Dome is an exercise in frustration. The folks in the box office were happy to sell me a $9 ticket, good for one day only, to the Dome, the El-Aqsa mosque, and the Islamic Museum. Along with all the other tourists admiring the mosaics inside the Dome, I was shooed out at 11 a.m., after a visit of just 20 minutes. The mosque, too, was closing at 11 -- but would reopen at 12:30, I was told. I arrived at 1 to find it had closed again, for the day. My one- day window of opportunity was gone.

There's none of this ambivalence toward tourists at the Tower of David Museum, a visitor-friendly attraction near the Jaffa Gate in the Old City, where sound-and-light shows and audience-participation whodunits are part of the lure. The museum, which occupies a 700-year-old fort with 2,700 years of archeology in the central courtyard, is a fine place to start a visit to Jerusalem, offering a historical overview of the city through state-of-the-art exhibits, including a hologram of what the first Temple looked like. David probably never came near the place, my guide acknowledges, but the name-recognition factor was too tempting to ignore.

Climb up to the ramparts and you're rewarded with the best view of Jerusalem, the Old City on one side, the New on the other. Three major religions crowd together in the Old City, jostling for space. You begin to understand the tensions here, tensions the museum tries to defuse. All its signage, for instance, is in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. And, in deference to Islamic rules on graven images, the museum has whited out Mohammed's face in a copy of a miniature depicting his ride to heaven.

Nonetheless, this is Jerusalem, and politics seeps into everything, even the scrupulously fair-minded Tower of David Museum. Those layers of archeology in the courtyard: Which culture's layers do you expose? Where do you stop?

Jerusalem shares Tel Aviv's airport. I took a group taxi from the airport to Jerusalem, and although it was a good 45-minute ride, it cost just $10 a person. On the other hand, I found Jerusalem's taxi drivers outrageous in their demands for off-the-meter, exorbitant fares. Insist that the driver turn the meter on. It isn't really broken.

The Artists House is at 12 Shmuel Hanagid St. in Jerusalem. Telephone 6253653.

Artspace is at 5 Hazefira in Jerusalem. Telephone 5662423.

A couple of restaurant recommendations. Mishkenot Sha'ananim, a French restaurant, has one of Jerusalem's finest views of the Old City. The specialty of the house, duck with different sauce options, is divine. Mishkenot Sha'ananim is at Yemen-moshe Street. Telephone 6251042.

Ocean, as the name implies, specializes in freshly caught fish. The food is fabulous, and so is the service. The night I went, the place had an unexpected touch of romance: A power failure, which fortunately happened after my dinner had been cooked, meant dining by flickering candlelight. Ocean is at 7 Rivlin St. Telephone 247501.