Word: beit
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...unsettling moments the visitor almost forgets where he is, almost forgets that this nightmare of multicultural hostility is taking place in something called the Whisper Gallery. The piercing experience is part of an extraordinary new museum that opens this week: the Beit Hashoah -- Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Built for $50 million by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a human-rights and research organization named after the famed Austrian Jew who helped bring more than a thousand Nazi war criminals to justice, the museum aims to teach tolerance -- by holding a mirror up to visitors of every race and ethnic...
...Beit Hashoah is special because it insists that spectators be part of the show, using the latest tricks of interactive technology generally found only in science museums. At computerized displays, visitors are challenged on their attitudes toward everything from affirmative action to homosexuality. At every turn they must make choices. Thus the museum becomes both an educational tool and a research tool that gauges public opinion...
When Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center's founder, began planning the Beit Hashoah in the early 1980s, he envisioned a rather conventional Holocaust museum. But he soon realized that it should be more. "We're talking about the eradication of hatred," he explains. "We have no guarantee that future Holocaust victims will be Jews." Karl Katz, a museum designer who helped plan the Beit Hashoah, recalls intense arguments about the plans: "You ask yourself what happens between the time a human being is born and the time he incinerates someone. How do you stop that attitude? We tried lots...
...Along with admirers, the Beit Hashoah already has critics. Muslim organizations charge that the museum ignores the plight of Palestinians. New York Times senior writer Judith Miller, author of One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust, accuses the museum of "vulgarization," noting that some Jewish scholars consider the "sound and light" approach disrespectful...
...obstacle to peace." President Bush followed up by warning that he might withhold $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Israel wants to help absorb Soviet Jews unless Jerusalem agrees to a settlement freeze. As usual, Shamir was unimpressed by the threats. Speaking at the West Bank settlement of Beit Arieh last week, he dismissed any connection to peace talks and vowed that the construction drive "cannot be stopped...