My Favorite Museum

Hello, my name is Batya and I live in Brooklyn. One day last year, on Chol HaMoed Succos, my bubby took me on the subway to a tall, shiny museum building. It looked very new. It wasn’t a quiet, serious museum about science, or one that has lots of paintings. It was a museum all about me — and you — and it was fun!

This museum is called The Jewish Children’s Museum. There are three-and-a-half floors of things to see and do. That’s how old I was when I went! Bubby told me that the word “exhibits” means the different groups of things you look at or touch. At this museum they have exhibits about everything Jewish that happened or happens all year long. Some exhibits are permanent, which means they stay there forever, like the black marker ink I got on my skirt. Other exhibits are temporary, which means they stay for a while and then a new exhibit is put in their place.

THE SIX-DAYS-OF-CREATION EXHIBIT

First there is an exhibit about the six days whenHashem made the world and what He made each day. I like light much more than darkness. Darkness is scary for me, so I’m glad Hashem made light right away! Fish were made on day five. I saw pretty fish swimming in the big tank. Seeing those fish swimming was nice, but I’m still waiting to see a real live gefilte fish. I was sure that all the fish in a Jewish museum like this would be gefilte fishes.
Where does my mommy get them all from every week if they are so hard to find?

THE SHABBOS EXHIBIT

The next exhibit was about my favorite day of the week — that’s Shabbos. If I told you it was about my favorite day of the year, then that would be my birthday, but my Tatty said I’m only allowed one birthday every year. I don’t like that at all. I think half birthdays are very important too, don’t you? By the way, I found out that the museum is almost going to be two-and-a-half years old soon — just like my baby brother Hillel will be in about two years from now.

At the Shabbos exhibit they have a huge, long table you can stand on; it is all ready for Shabbos, except nobody really eats there. It’s just so you can see everything. On the table there is a very tall make-believe Kiddush cup. If you look inside (there are steps to get you to the top), you can see a film about making wine and about making Kiddush. If you dance on grapes, they mush and the juice will also come out, but then it makes the floor sticky. I know because I tried it once.

My favorite part of the Shabbos exhibit was the challah tunnel. That’s a VERY large challah that looks almost real, except that you can crawl through it. It has sesame seeds and poppy seeds, but no raisins. Somebody is smart at this museum because I do not like mushy raisins on challah, and I bet a lot of other kids don’t either. This challah tunnel smells like homemade challah baking in an oven. I wonder where they bought that smell from. In my preschool we make challah dough sometimes. Then we make a hole in each piece of dough and put a popsicle stick in it, like a challah pop. But we never made a hole big enough to crawl through. Maybe I will ask my morah to let us try.

THE JERUSALEM OF OLD EXHIBIT

I haven’t been to Eretz Yisrael yet. Have you? My aunt and uncle live there, and sometimes they come with their kids on an airplane to visit me. When I speak to my cousins on the phone, I will have a surprise to tell them. “I walked on stones from Eretz Yisrael,” I will say. Yes, really, because they have some, made to look like an old street, at the museum. Those are very special stones. I wonder who had to put them in their suitcases? Did the airplane fly slower because they were so heavy? Museums can’t answer all my questions, and even my family has trouble answering me sometimes, but that’s okay. I just keep on asking, anyway.

THE JEWISH HOLIDAYS EXHIBIT

Do you know how you have to wait so long for every Yom Tov to finally come and then it finishes so quickly? At the museum you can see something from every Yom Tov all on the
same day! I pressed olives into oil for Chanukah with a machine called an olive press. When I pulled the handle down, it pressed on the olives and real oil came out. A few minutes later I went to sit in a succah. It just never happens that way in my house. I hate waiting, and I like this quick way much better. I wonder, would Mommy mind if we lit menorahs in our
succah this year? My Tatty always saves a small piece of matzoh from Pesach so he can eat it in the succah. He says that it connects the Yamim Tovim. Here in the museum they also connect everything together. Before Rosh HaShanah they even let the children make shofars. They give you a real horn and they make a hole in it, and you can really use it.
Near the succah they have a cart filled with toy esrogim. There you use a special kind of glass thing that helps you see each esrog better. They have pictures of what a kosher esrog needs to look like, and they even have real pasul ones so you can learn what not to use on Succos. This way the children learn to find the best esrog. No boo-boos, no broken parts, and of course, no lemons.

THE KOSHER SUPERMARKET AND KOSHER KITCHEN EXHIBITS

My favorite part of the whole museum is the kid-size kosher supermarket. You walk through
with a shopping cart and buy things. Bubby showed me how they have a scanner machine that really beeps when you want to “buy” the foods, and Bubby told me that the cashier screen asks questions about kashrus and brachos. I “bought” kosher cheese, barbeque sauce, pears, carrots, milk, tuna, and corn. Then, since the food isn’t real, you don’t need to pay them money and so you put it all back. They have a kosher kitchen there too. The green side is for dairy (milchigs) and the red side is for meat (fleishigs). That makes it easy to know what each side is for, but anyway, in my house, the fleishig side is always the side with the dirty dishes after Shabbos, so that’s how I know which side is which.

PROJECT TIME

After we saw a lot more stuff, Bubby and I went to make projects. Each kid gets to make one, but I guess my bubby looks young because they let her make one too. I made a sticker picture of the Torah, and Bubby made a necklace with beads that have Hebrew letters on them. But Bubby made a necklace that spelled out my name and she couldn’t use it, so
in the end she gave it to me as a present. Bubbies always do funny stuff like that.

After all that fun I was really hungry so Bubby took me to one of the succahs that the museum lets you eat in, and we ate real food from the restaurant in the museum. I ate a hot dog on a roll that sort of looked like a challah roll. Bubby just watched and then she took me home, and that was it. If you go to the Jewish Children’s Museum, you’ll see all the neat things I just told you about, but you also might see and do a lot more than I did, especially if you are taller, or if you know how to read or write. I heard that this year they are making a special Simchas Beis HaSho’eivah show on Chol HaMoed that has men juggling knives and fire. Oh boy! Do their mommies know about this? And how do people keep things in the air like that, anyway? I’m going to ask Bubby to take me again this year. Last year’s trip was so much fun! Maybe I’ll see you there!

Batya