Five Jerusalem Museums
By ARLYNN NELLHAUS; ARLYNN NELLHAUS is the author of ''The Heart of Jerusalem'' (John Muir Publications).
Published: January 21, 1990
JERUSALEM straddles its hills and cascades into its valleys, sitting upon layer after layer of history. Often, literally, scoops of earth are dug up and yet another archeological find is discovered.
But learning about this ancient, vibrant city - the focal point of Judaism and Christianity and the third most important city to Islam after Mecca and Medina - isn't only a vertical process. Visitors who reach outward, as well as downward, find that it isn't only millenniums of history that become more clear, but that it is also the life and experience of the varied people who make up what Mayor Teddy Kollek calls ''the Jerusalem mosaic.''
The Golden City's smaller museums are storehouses of enlightenment. They focus on a kaleidoscope of subjects from, of all things, taxation to the barrenness of a British prison to the life of the Karaites, a Jewish sect established in the eighth century. Visiting them is like getting a toe through the door into another era or culture.
Monastery Of the Holy Cross
The hulking Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Holy Cross squats like a silent behemoth at the southeastern end of the Valley of the Cross. For years, the edifice seemed dark, gloomy and inhospitable. It was rumored that only two monks and the elderly mother of one of them rattled around in the ancient structure that has contained as many as 300 rooms. Then, in 1986, a portion of its vast interior was opened to visitors. Behind the forbidding monastery walls are quiet courtyards, one of the loveliest churches in all Jerusalem, an unpretentious museum and, truly, two monks and the elderly mother of one of them. The first church here, on the site believed to have been where the tree used to make Jesus' cross grew, was built in the early fourth century.
Persians destroyed it in 614. Moslems destroyed its replacement in 1009. Around 1038, construction began again. Much of what you see today dates from 1038, while an ersatz Spanish-style rococo tower is only 130 years old.
What is so ingratiating about the church, compared with other Jerusalem churches built before the mid-1800's, is that it is both bright inside and devoid of religious overstatement. It is quiet in its grand dignity.
The floor is an 11th-century mosaic (stand on the step to the right of the iconostasis and you can see the remains of a sixth-century mosaic floor). Seventeenth-century frescos adorn pillars and walls.
The frescoes are said to be the finest in Israel. They are distinguished for their clean lines, expressive portraits and intense colors. In one of them, two church fathers gaze off into the distance. At their feet is a small white-bearded, red-robed figure. This is Shota Rustaveli, the Georgian Shakespeare and Cervantes, who came to the monastery in the 12th century and lived there until he died.
On the upper floors, you can see the old kitchen with its huge vats and wall ovens and the refectory with three long tables topped with white and pink marble.
Another display contains photographs of solemn seminary graduates with their black gowns, tall, black hats and black beards; examples of the monastery's archeological collection and paintings - one of which -a large triangular shaped piece, shows Jesus on the cross, a myriad of events taking place around him and the monastery itself.
(Monastery of the Holy Cross, Valley of the Cross (Vale of Rehavia). Hours: 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Monday to Thursday and Saturday; 9 A.M. to 1:30 P.M. Friday. Closed Sunday. Admission: $1.10. Telephone 667121.)
The art in the Wolfson Museum consists of Jewish ceremonial objects of all eras - Bible scroll containers, marriage contracts, goblets used for kiddush (blessings over wine), charity boxes and circumcision knives. These humble items were - and still are - lavished over by artists whose creative imagination flourished, despite the traditional Jewish prohibition against representation of the human form.
An 18th-century German ivory carver, however, made his own rules. He cut images of Moses and Aaron into one side of a kiddush cup and Joseph and a half-nude Mrs. Potiphar on the other. Out of consideration for viewers' sensitivity, the museum exhibits the cup on its side, so only Moses and Aaron can be seen. That the kiddush cup is of ivory rather than silver is, in itself, unusual.
Another rare item is a blue velvet Hungarian Passover matzoh cover decorated with delicate, translucent flowers. The cover is a romantic item, but the startling thing about it is that the shining petals are made of fish scales.
Across the hall from the museum is a collection of 30 dioramas - scenes viewed through glass - only two-and-a-half to five feet wide, which tell the Jewish people's history from Abraham's journey out of Ur 4,000 years ago to the re-establishment of Israel in 1948.
They inspire a sense of wonder with their huge casts and subsidiary scenes. About an inch high, the figures were so expertly constructed by the English artist David Stokes in 1958 that they reveal emotions as clearly as do flesh-and-blood actors.