Jewish Historical Museum

Hehehe, it's History weekend, guys. This afternoon I went to Jewish Historical Museum. The Jewish community in Amsterdam has been there for quite a period. They say, some words in Amsterdam dialect could be traced back to its Yiddish origin.

It is housed in the former Synagoge. The interior was kept to help visitors imagine how it would be when it was still used as a Synagoge.

The Torah arc -- where Torah was kept, with the curtain to separate it from the rest of the room, the 'everlasting' lamp nearby, reminds me about Tabernacle in Catholic church.

The 'yad' -- means 'hand' -- the stick they use to point the position they're reading in Torah, fact that they don't touch it with their hand but rather with 'yad' reminds me with Moslems (correct me if I'm wrong).

There I also see media presentation about their life, their important days. Bar mitzvah, Shabbat, wedding, etc. One interesting thing that I saw in the wedding video: the wedding ring is inserted by the groom to the bride's fore-finger then the bride moved it to her ring-finger. The same thing happened when the bride gave a ring -- first to fore-finger then moved to ring-finger.

Upstairs there's an exhibition about Amsterdam's Jewish history -- I skipped that and went to children's exhibition, titled 'Where Mokum is Home' or 'In Mokum staat een huis'. Mokum is the Jewish name for Amsterdam. I can't see how a kid cannot enjoy such kind of exhibition. There are many interesting things presented in a simple way -- very nice exhibition.

There's a 'kitchen' display, where in the drawers you can see how they have separated dish for milk (blue) and meat (red) and why do they do that. In another drawer, there are small animal toys of 'kosher' food, and on another drawer about 'non kosher'.

One nice thing about being in Amsterdam: all things in museum are presented in English as well as in Dutch. And the English version is just the same version, not a 'resume type'.