Visitors to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv were outraged to discover an exhibit that normalizes assimilation.
After receiving numerous complaints about the exhibit, Yad L’Achim contacted the museum management demanding that it be removed.
Once it became clear that the museum had no intention of doing so, Yad L’Achim issued a warning to the general public to stay away from the museum, which is taxpayer funded.
"While we are all fighting for the future of the Jewish people, the museum is pulling in the exact opposite direction," Yad L’Achim said in a video.
"With our tax shekels, those who claim to strengthen Jewish identity choose to showcase a model of an assimilated family and normalize statements that are outside the Jewish consensus and ethos. Remember the words of Golda Meir: 'As far as I am concerned, every assimilated person joins the list of six million.'
“In the museum, instead of preserving the memory of the Jewish people, they are turning the Jewish people into a memory."
A Yad L’Achim official said: “It is inconceivable that a publicly funded museum, whose purpose is to tell the story of the Jewish people, legitimizes and normalizes a serious phenomenon like assimilation.
“Over the years, Jews in exile went to great lengths to protect themselves from assimilation. It is painful to think that now, after the people of Israel have returned to their land, we are seeing a national museum that normalizes it."
The matter was first brought to public attention by Yishai Gvirtzman, a social media influencer, after he visited the museum.
“I don't think there is a place for such an exhibit in a Jewish museum," Gvirtzman says. "Is this what the founders intended, and can this place be called the Museum of the Jewish People?"