What a walk through Jerusalem’s open-air market taught me about the Ingathering of the Exiles

I found myself wandering the halls of Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance again this week.

It’s an extraordinary building. It also happens to sit atop part of a 700-year-old Muslim cemetery, earning it the less flattering nickname, the “Museum of Intolerance.”

I wanted to give it another chance. I parked in the underground garage, walked through the front doors, and wandered the empty halls.

There were only a handful of visitors in the entire building. Downstairs, in a side room, there’s a small October 7 exhibit that feels almost like an afterthought. A few photography galleries fill a fraction of the cavernous space, and other than that, mostly crickets.

It is one of the largest and most expensive museums in Israel. It took more than twenty years to complete. Yet somehow it doesn’t really feel like a museum. It feels like a building waiting for someone to figure out what to do with it.

And as I walked through its mostly empty halls, I found myself thinking, I know what story belongs here.

I’ll come back to that.

But first, let me tell you about something that happened last week.

A History Lesson in the Shuk

I was guiding a Christian friend on her first visit to Israel. Like any good tourist, she asked a great question:

“So what’s the typical Israeli cuisine?”

She was probably hoping for a good restaurant recommendation. Instead, she got a history lecture. Sometimes I feel bad for my clients.

“There really isn’t any such thing as Israeli cuisine,” I told her.

We were standing in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda Market, so instead of answering with words, I answered with food.

First we stopped for malawach, that delicious, flaky, pan-fried bread that Yemenite Jews brought here when they arrived, mostly in the 1950s. We spread it with tomato, fiery green schug, and hard-boiled egg, and ate it while standing in the middle of the market.

A few stalls later we shared a mufleta, the impossibly thin, buttery pancake that Moroccan Jews traditionally prepare at........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)