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The break-in was discovered on Friday (23.5.03) morning when the Museum was opened. The Tel Aviv police were notified immediately and have started an investigation.

The stolen objects, with a photo and brief description, can be viewed on this website.

At present the exhibition is closed to the public.

The exhibition presents a selection from the Gross Family Collection, one of the world's most prominent private Judaica collections.

For over 2,000 years, since before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the Diaspora has been an inescapable fact of Jewish life. Very early on questions arose concerning where Jewish communities were to be found and whether one Diaspora might differ from another. Beginning in the early Middle Ages, people traveled to the most remote places, ­ to "the ends of the world" ­ in search of Jewish enclaves, bringing back stories of the extraordinary lives of Jews there. The viewpoints of these travelers were generally shaped by their own origins, but wherever they went they always found a Jewish world which, though different from their own in many ways, was essentially always still their own world: In other words, they discovered the familiar in the foreign as well as the foreign in the familiar. Thus their journey was not so much one to the ends of the world as it was a journey to no end of the world, which is thus the title of this exhibition of Judaica from the Gross Family Collection.

In assembling his collection, Judaica collector Bill Gross set out to create a collection concerned with global Jewry and to demonstrate through its very variety the uniformity running through Jewish religion and tradition. Thus it is an ideal collection for the exhibition Journey to no End of the World, which presents Jewish life in 33 different places, among them Fez (Morocco), Cochin (India), Vienna (Austria), Balkh (Afghanistan), Vilna (Lithuania), Rome (Italy), London (England), Jassy (Romania). Each place is represented by a few selected Judaica and Hebrew manuscripts, which although they clearly reflect the local cultural context are also typical of traditional Judaism. Thus the interface between Jewish culture and the local culture is a primary attribute of the objects.

For each place, an appropriate literary and historical travel report is supplied. These reports, which range from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, show how Jewish tradition transcends the boundaries of time as well as those of geography.

Since the Journey to No End of the World should not be regarded as something frozen in the past, each place is represented by a photograph of contemporary Jewish life. The exhibition thus bridges the gap between past and present, between what no longer exists and what remains or recurs. In addition, this link should make it clear that the Judaica objects are not relics of some bygone Jewish religious cult, but inherent parts of contemporary Jewish life.

The exhibition was created and designed at the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, where it was exhibited in 2001. It has consequently been exhibited in the Jewish Museum of Frankfurt, Germany, and at the Center for Jewish History in New York Place.

Curator of the exhibition: Dr. Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, The Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna
Designer of the exhibition: Dr. Martin Kohlbauer, Architect, Vienna
Curator at Beth Hatefutsoth: Sarah Harel-Hoshen