Aliyah 113: Weizman Science Garden

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Haym Weizmann University

On a previous adventure, I visited Haim Weizmann’s house (and I know, I spell his name differently every time), the first president of Israel and the modern Zionist ‘founding father’ I admire most for his moderate political views, scientific research, and combining different talents to do things like … get the British to issue the Balfour Declaration, furthering political aims, based on sharing with them a method of making acetone, furthering scientific research.

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Visitor Center

For this visit, it was to the visitor’s center and science garden. While I knew there’s the “Weizmann Institute”, I had no idea of the scale. It is a huge university campus on more than a square kilometer of land (about 0.42 sq miles) – and they really, really care about aesthetics. So foreign. While I can’t count that many college campuses that I’ve visited, this was surely the nicest. There’s tasteful care in layout, architecture, landscaping, art, botanicas, and fitting this all together into a coherent theme.

Even though I put the address in Waze that the university said to, Waze took me too far and I circled back to find a large, multi-arch entranceway. This visit started with a tour of the visitor’s center – which is free though requires an advanced timed reservation for Hebrew or English – which makes little sense because a) it’s free, b) it was empty and getting there an hour early made no difference, and c) the ‘exhibits’ were dual lingual or not.

The visitor center is an advertisement for the university with science-looking screens controlled by buttons to give the appearance of something educational. The ‘exhibits’ are aesthetically pleasing and all – though not worth a stop. The best thing I can say about it is that the only other room, the theater, had screens on either wall as well as under the floor. Cool, though could be used for so much more than advertising.

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The Campus

We then decided to walk to the Garden of Science on the other side of the university on what was quite a pleasant stroll. There’s English on ever sign, a lot of English in the streets (foreign students, I believe), and vending machines which have a choice of four or so languages, none of them being Hebrew.

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The Science Garden

If you, like myself, were here before 2023, it is completely different now. Instead of an open field with smattering of cool science stuff (like a hamster wheel powered Archimedes screw and ellipsoid sheet to hear sound from a specific far-off location), it’s now filled in with exhibit after exhibit based on category such as botany, friction, the body, coding, and so on (including the Archimedes screw).

The place is unique – because – Israel … Jews. We’re great at being unique. Take, for example, the planetarium … this is the first I have been to where no separate ticket is required, there’s no entrance line, and no start and end time for a show. There are also no proper … chairs. Big beanbag chairs lie under the center of the dome and the trippy space movie and ethereal sound continue around you. They close at 2pm because – Israel, so we didn’t spend as much time lying down as we’d have liked. Check their hours first because – Israel. Or rather … because – we’re not within 50 miles of New York City where everything is expected to be open all the time.

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Israel vs U.S. Exhibits

Some of the exhibits are hits, some are misses – perhaps better explanations would help (tours are available except the day of the week I was there). Climbing up stairs to nowhere that you have to climb back down again seems like a waste. “I bet there’s some sort of slide up there … or … okay, okay, let’s work with it … walk back down.” On one of those, if you look for it (because, Israel), there’s a cord to pull simulating moving a diaphragm to cause someone to breathe. America would put the cord in my face with huge letters and flashing lights . . . the sound it made would be deafening and the path would continue on rather than dead-end just ahead.

On the other hand, the U.S. once had an interesting exhibit – the Touch Tunnel at Liberty Science Center. The original pitch-black tunnel had people go in as fast as the person behind them could coax you forward even when you didn’t know if you’d be going up or down, on something rough, smooth, or shmooshy … it smacked of originality and creativity.

So of course, they got rid of it. People wanted it back and now it’s a flat, single level, predictable zigzag path with one texture and no elevation changes. Light leaks in through the sides. Walking through my basement at night is more of an adventure than that.

Even the Statue of Liberty has one staircase going up and another coming down. This woman is standing there being the cultural icon of America: “Everyone look at me, give me attention, look at my light, public transportation to get here is a nightmare, I’m hollow … and I’m covered in rust.” If the same statue were in Israel, it would be those three iconic towers in Tel Aviv … “we’re not the tallest though we are beautiful, we are very functional, we have good public transportation, we have no signage, and good luck finding the staircase.”

Listen, do you want the aesthetics of Weizzman Center and difficulty figuring out how to get there or utilitarian green signage of the Eisenhower interstate taking you to downtown Jersey City?

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