Museum brings Bible to life for Midreshet Shalhevet High School students

Midreshet Shalhevet High School celebrated what school officials called “an extraordinary school year” with a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. In honor of the MSH scholars’ success at the Chidon Ha-Tanach, a national Bible contest for Jewish teenagers, the group was treated to a private tour of the museum to bring the biblical history to life.

The museum’s Nachliel Selavan focused the tour on Jewish nooks such as Exodus, Esther, and Jonah, which complemented the topics the girls studied for the competition. The students were immersed in the cultures presented in each book and said they gained a new perspective on the main ideas.

Within the tour, they viewed images of pharaohs in the ancient Egyptian galleries and came to understand the high power in the early history. Then it was on to the palace room of Assyria, whose capital Nineveh, was visited by Jonah which allowed them to recognize the miracles done by God. The students moved on to the palace of the mighty Persian kings and saw the gold and silver dishes used by Esther and Ahasuerus in the Purim story.

MSH officials said that visiting the Met brought the stories to life for the girls, and helped them grasp the different worlds written about in the biblical texts.