Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Jerusalem,

a city of devotion and division,

and at its heart, a museum with secrets dark and strange.

Underground freedom fighters,

an elixir from a magical oasis,

and a rusted nail that whispers of a crucifixion,

secrets hidden in plain sight inside the Israel Museum.

(dramatic music)

The Israel Museum stands in a city of vital importance

to three of the world's great religions,

Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

For believers, Jerusalem is where God spoke

to Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad.

Beneath many holy sites, there are sacred ruins underground,

in layer upon layer back to the dawn of time.

Religious relics found beneath Jerusalem

and in the holy lands beyond

fill the galleries of the Israel Museum.

Many, like the Dead Sea Scrolls,

are charged with spiritual meaning,

and some contain museum secrets.

- This bone box found in Jerusalem

has a Hebrew inscription on it with just a name.

The name is Yehohanan Ben Hagakol.

This is the name of the deceased.

- [Narrator] When Yehohanan died in the first century AD,

his body was laid in a cave to decompose.

And then his bones were placed into a stone box.

They remained undisturbed for 20 centuries

until the cave was discovered by archeologists in 1968.

- When the box was opened and the bones were examined,

the ankle bone of the deceased was found to be pierced

by a huge iron nail that remained in the bone.

This is evidence for the fact

that Yehohanan found his death by crucifixion.

This is the only find ever found

of a man that was crucified.

- [Narrator] And yet, Yehohanan's last remains

may have the power to completely change

the traditional image of Christ on the cross.

What was crucifixion really like?

That is our museum secret.

In old Jerusalem, traditional images of crucifixion abound.

To probe the reality behind them,

archeologist Shimon Gibson will follow a procession

by devout Christians as they retrace

Jesus's 12 stations of the cross.

- This is the Via Dolorosa,

the beginning of the Via Dolorosa.

The procession begins here at the Antonia Fortress.

The procession then leads down

through the streets of Jerusalem, passes under this arch.

(group sings in foreign language)

We're gonna follow them now.

- [Narrator] In Jesus's time,

Jerusalem was ruled by the Roman empire,

a situation that some did not accept.

- An extremely strained relationship existed

between the Roman occupiers and the Judeans,

particularly in Jerusalem because this is where

the Jewish temple was located

and where their main Jewish festivities would take place.

- [Narrator] Some Jews resorted to violence

against Roman oppression.

For those who were captured,

the standard punishment was crucifixion.

- The Romans would say,

"Look, if you defy us, this will be your fate.

"You will be crucified,

"and your dignity will be taken away from you."

(group sings in foreign language)

- [Narrator] The procession ends

at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Many Christians believe that this chapel

is at the precise location

where Jesus was nailed to the cross.

To the faithful, his death and resurrection are a certainty.

And in well-known depictions,

his suffering is recorded in great detail.

A nail pierces each of Jesus's palms.

A single nail pins his feet to a tall wooden cross.

But is this what crucifixion really looked like?

- First of all, you can see that Jesus is not naked.

He was supposed to be naked.

The second thing is that just look at the size of the cross.

The cross is very tall.

In Israel, we don't have those huge trees.

We have no evidence whatsoever that the cross

or the act of crucifixion looked like this scene.

- [Narrator] Dr. Israel Hershkovitz

is an acclaimed anatomist who specializes in biohistory.

He intends to follow the evidence, wherever it leads.

- Sometimes it's very difficult

because you already have some kind of a concept

how crucifixion looks like.

So you have actually to forget

everything you know about crucifixion.

[Narrator] Dr. Hershkovitz has been entrusted

with Yehohanan's ankle bone.

A CAT scan of the ancient object

makes Hershkovitz question the traditional assumption

that both of Jesus's feet

were pierced by one nail on the cross.

So he measures the nail through Yehohanan's ankle

and then inserts a nail of the same length

through the feet of a cadaver.

- We need then to find out whether a nail

of 12 centimeters in length can hold two feet together.

And you can see that the nail is running through

both heel bones, but it hardly comes out over here.

- [Narrator] As an anatomist, Hershkovitz also questions

the traditional image of Jesus's lacerated palms.

- Imagine to yourself, if crucified this way, okay,

you can fall easily forward.

- [Narrator] So he believes the victim

must have been attached from behind.

- The nail didn't pass through

what we call through the ventral part

but actually passed through what we call the dorsal part.

Each foot was nailed separately to the wood.

- [Narrator] As for the cross itself,

because of the region's short trees, Hershkovitz thinks

the pieces could not have been more than two meters long.

- You easily elevate it and you can do it very quickly.

- [Narrator] This is the crucifixion

that fits the physical evidence and the history.

In 70 AD. Roman soldiers set fire

to the Jewish temple at the center of Jerusalem.

The Jewish rebels who rushed to save it were captured

and crucified outside the walls of the city.

- If you use this type of method,

you can really suspend hundreds of people a day.

This is the way I believe people were executed

during the Roman period.

- [Narrator] But if so many died on the cross,

why is there so little physical evidence?

- The reason was quite simple.

That is that when somebody was taken down from the cross,

the nails were removed and reused.

The one instance we have is a result of a mistake.

The nail had gone through the heel bone

and had struck a knot in the cross or the actual tree.

And as a result, when they were trying to take the nail out,

they couldn't because the end had bent over.

- [Narrator] And so the nail and the bone

survived all this time together

to change the iconic image of the crucifixion forever.

Next on Museum Secrets,

the original underground freedom fighters.

This story begins in the most secure location

in the Israel Museum.

Here, a steel volt safeguards a fortune in rare coins

from throughout the ancient world.

Curator Haim Gitler wants to show us two coins

that were in circulation in Judea in 132 AD.

The first displays the face of a Roman emperor.

This makes sense

because Judea was a province of the Roman empire.

But the second coin displays a cluster of grapes,

the Jewish symbol for freedom,

along with markings that are definitely not Jewish.

- [Haim] You can see the silhouette

of the face of the Roman emperor.

You see the nose, the chin.

And here are part of a legend, Augustus,

which is going around the edge.

- [Narrator] This strange coin is linked to a moment

when history nearly took a completely different path.

The reason why is a museum secret.

Our story begins at the height of Rome's power

not long after its army had destroyed

the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

This disaster had so demoralized the Jews

that most accepted Roman rule as inevitable.

But in the Judean hills, a new freedom fighter arose.

There are no statues or images of the man.

Historians even disagree on his name,

but most call him Bar Kokhba.

He needed fighters

who believed that mighty Rome could be defeated.

And so he recruited believers,

students from Jewish religious schools.

The Romans had weapons and armor that Bar Kokhba

could not match, so he gave his men something else,

(Yehoshua grunts)

a lethal ancient Hebrew fighting technique

called Abir.

- Abir is a combination of every fighting system

and category of the system used by all of our people

in every generation from the beginning until now.

- [Narrator] For observant Jews, the word is everything,

and this extends to Abir.

Every move is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

- I'll give you a letter, for example, alef, beit, beit,

gimel, gimel, don, don,

reish, shin,

hei, vav, teit, teit.

Okay, and this is alef, which incorporates the entire body.

- [Narrator] Bar Kokhba did not engage

in skirmishes or terrorist attacks

but patiently built his army

till it numbered in the thousands.

In populated areas, Roman soldiers were always

on the lookout for enemies of the empire,

so Bar Kokhba ordered his men into the hills.

- Okay, so we are now in the Judean foothills

which are 30 kilometers to the west from Jerusalem.

- [Narrator] Dr. Eitan Klein is an antiquities

theft inspector who often patrols this remote area.

- [Eitan] So we are going to an ancient site

called (mumbles) cave.

- [Narrator] Recently, he found

one of Bar Kokhba's hidden bases.

- [Eitan] We know that it was inhabited by Jews,

and we found an opening of the cave

of an underground hiding complex from the Bar Kokhba period.

- [Narrator] This is the first time

these caves have been captured on film.

- So this is a refuge room,

part of a hiding complex during the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

So these are storage jars.

People that were inside this cave,

they were using it probably for oil for wheat.

- [Narrator] Historians believe it took Bar Kokhba

several years to build up his forces

and the underground complex.

Storage rooms and cisterns were designed

to provide food and water for a long stay.

In case of Roman attack,

the maze provides multiple avenues of escape

and many ways to become completely lost.

One could easily die down here

unless, like an ancient freedom fighter,

you know every twist and turn.

In this cavern, Klein has found something

that archeologists rarely see.

- This carved stone was used as a door lock to this opening.

So if an enemy is coming,

the people here could lock the door, and that's it.

- [Narrator] But the caves were not simply defensive.

With entrances that blend into the landscape,

the caves were designed for surprise attack.

When Roman brigades trudged down nearby desert roads,

they were set upon by Bar Kokhba's hostile forces

who appeared out of nowhere.

Caught off guard,

the soldiers were forced to fight hand to hand.

- My ancestors realized that the Roman soldier

was not a very great fighter on the individual level,

that their strength was in the brigade

and working as a unit.

They could not use their chariots,

they could not come in in the brigade style

because they would have to keep going around trees.

That would separate them and keep them in a situation

where they would have to fight us as fighters

on a one-to-one level.

(Yehoshua grunts)

- [Narrator] Bar Kokhba's forces

defeated brigade after brigade, one of the rare occasions

in history when the Roman army was forced to retreat.

But rebellions cannot be won on the battlefield alone,

and that brings us back to this.

To create a viable nation,

Bar Kokhba needed currency as soon as possible.

To get it, he collected Roman coins

and put his metal smiths to work.

- They are taking the Roman coins,

and they are striking the image,

the Jewish image over the Roman coins.

And then you have two-folded meaning

because it says we are not only free,

but we're putting our freedom over your empire.

- [Narrator] And if the story ended here,

Bar Kokhba's legacy and the history of the world

might have been very different.

But Rome could not let the Jewish victory stand.

The emperor assembled 60,000 soldiers for a massive surge.

The Romans retook liberated towns one by one

then burnt them to the ground.

Bar Kokhba was killed in a final desperate battle

as Rome unleashed collective punishment

on rebellious and peaceable Jews alike.

Survivors who fled from the holy land

blamed this disaster on Bar Kokhba,

and among modern Jews,

his name still evokes strong emotions.

- If you want one word, I would say messianic.

If you want a few words,

I'd say charismatic, brutal,

and irresponsible.

- [Narrator] Whatever one thinks of Bar Kokhba,

his dream is shared by many today.

That dream is inscribed on the reverse side

of many Bar Kokhba coins,

(speaks in foreign language), for the freedom of Israel.

Up next, the secret of Herod's tomb.

Inside the Israel Museum, curator Dudi Mevorah

oversees completion of a new exhibition.

It has personal significance for Dudi

because it will showcase a discovery made by his colleague

and former teacher, the late Ehud Netzer.

Professor Netzer is celebrated

as one of Israel's greatest archeologists.

During his lifetime,

he made discoveries throughout the holy land,

from the Fortress of Masada to the City of Jericho.

But his lifelong obsession

involved a colossal ruin called Herodium.

Even before archeologists began to excavate,

the ruins of a palace were visible to any passerby,

and the Jewish king who built it is also known.

His name is Herod.

- Take your men.

Go to this Bethlehem and kill all the newborns, all of them.

- [Narrator] Though the real Herod didn't kill babies,

he did order his Jewish subjects to bow down to Rome.

- Hail, Octavian.

- [Narrator] He also decreed

that he should be buried at Herodium.

Unfortunately, he didn't say where,

and Herodium is a big place.

Archeologists agreed that Herod's tomb

must be here somewhere, but no one could find it.

In 1972, Ehud Netzer decided he was going to crack

the secret of where Herod was buried.

And today, Dudi Mevorah will retrace

his journey of discovery.

- Most scholars actually gambled on the idea

that Herod is buried up on top of the mountain.

Most of them believed

that he is buried in the eastern tower,

which is a massive tower that we see behind.

Professor Netzer believed from the beginning

that it's not reasonable to assume that

because the moment you use a place for burial,

it becomes virtually impure in Judaism.

- [Narrator] So Netzer began to hunt for Herod's tomb

at the foot of the mountain.

- Professor Ehud Netzer excavating down here

finds this building already in the 1970s.

At first stroke of the hammer,

he thinks this might be the tomb.

It's a monumental room

with the pilasters decorating the walls.

You can see them protruding here.

It's a large space with very high ceiling,

probably either domed or with a pyramid on the top,

but it's open to the east.

- [Narrator] The opening told Netzer

that the structure was a formal dining room.

- [Dudi] It was not a closed room.

It couldn't be a tomb.

And then he thinks that the tomb may be next door.

A ritual bath found next to it gives another hint

to the possibility that this is where the tomb might be

unfortunately, the tomb was not found.

- [Narrator] As he continued to search,

Netzer came to believe that Herod himself

had designed Herodium according to a geometric plan.

- [Dudi] He became so involved with Herod

that he could almost plan the way Herod planned

and think the way Herod thought.

- [Narrator] He continued to search

for Herod's tomb for 30 years.

- [Dudi] He realized that it's not down here.

He realized that there is no monumental building

or cave that could be it.

- [Narrator] In 2004, shortly after his 71st birthday,

Professor Netzer decides he needs a new perspective.

- So from where we are standing,

we can see the pool down there

with the bathhouse right at the corner.

And the place where we are, the palace,

is right on top of the mountain here.

- [Narrator] Netzer notices that structures on the plain

form a straight line that connects to the east tower.

Sensing Herod's geometric plan,

he believes the tomb should be on the line.

- Professor Netzer takes a diagonal

from the center of the pool to the eastern tower,

and he decides to cross section that slope.

- [Narrator] On the slope,

the ruins of a tomb are not visible,

but Netzer knows there might be a good reason for that.

Historians believe that after Herod's death,

Jewish insurgents hid from the Roman army

in caves on the mountainside.

Hating Herod as a Roman collaborator,

the rebels might have reduced his tomb to rubble.

Halfway up the slope,

Netzer's team discovers shards of pink stone,

puzzle pieces that fit together beautifully.

- We're looking at a sarcophagus

made out of pinkish chalk stone,

decorated with a very fine rosette.

- [Narrator] At the spot where the shards were found,

Professor Netzer uncovers this.

- This is actually the tomb garden

with the podium of the tomb at the center of it.

This is the exterior wall.

This is the base of the building,

then it goes to 25 meters high up,

three stories of 25 meters,

which would be eight stories of today.

- [Narrator] By entering the mind of King Herod,

Ehud Netzer had found his tomb.

- It was clear this must be Herod.

What we found here, architectural fragments

that enabled us to restore a monument

which fits Herod's taste and status.

- This is big time archeology

because finding direct contact

to known historical figures,

notorious historical figures, is not an everyday thing.

- [Narrator] Before Ehud Netzer died at the age of 76,

he helped plan the museum exhibition

that will reveal Herod's tomb to the world.

And sadly, the reason for Professor Netzer's death

is part of our story.

- Right here at the top of the theater

and outside the royal box of King Herod, we were at the end

of a very active morning with Professor Netzer.

We had a very enthusiastic morning,

all looking forward to what we were going to do.

And we sat here for a moment to rest in the shade.

And Ehud sat where he sat dozens of times before.

And one of the beams gave up and he collapsed backwards

into the theater and fell all the way down to the stage

and was wounded very severely and eventually died.

- [Narrator] Ehud Netzer's death was tragic,

but he died where he accomplished his life's greatest work.

Herodium is King Herod's monument,

but it's also a monument to Ehud Netzer.

Up next, a secret about the Virgin Mary.

In the Israel Museum, as in every museum,

some artifacts are incomplete.

And sometimes, what is missing is the most important part.

- This is the lower part of wall painting

that was discovered in 1997.

And we see here pairs of feet.

We assume that this is Jesus is sitting on the center,

in throne, and on the right side is Maria approaching Jesus.

- [Narrator] The fresco that once showed

Jesus and the Virgin Mary was discovered

not far from what many believe is Mary's tomb.

Here, 47 steps beneath the ground,

archeologist Jon Seligman will help reveal a museum secret.

- The tomb of the Virgin Mary

doesn't look like an ancient tomb

because the tomb is being cut away

from the bedrock around it,

and all you see is just the shelf

where the body of Mary was traditionally laid.

- [Narrator] Her tomb is empty, but that is not the secret.

By Christian tradition,

Mary left her tomb when she ascended to heaven.

The secret involves an arched niche cut into the wall.

It has the same basic shape as this,

or this,

or this.

Today, 1.5 billion people on Earth know exactly what it is,

but in case you don't know--

- Right behind me is the mihrab,

which is a niche in the mosque,

and basically, it signifies the direction of prayer.

And this is usually in the direction of the Kaaba,

which is the holy structure in Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

And whenever we pray, we pray in congregation,

in unison towards this one direction.

- [Narrator] Why is there a Muslim mihrab

in the tomb of the Virgin Mary.

That is our museum secret.

Our story begins in Jerusalem in the 11th century.

Muslims fought to retake the city that had been conquered

by Christian crusaders several decades before.

And when the Muslims reached this place,

they began to tear down walls and churches.

- You've got to remember,

Western Christianity was seen very unfavorably.

A place like this which had been involved very deeply

with the Crusader order in Jerusalem was dismantled.

- [Narrator] But instead of dismantling Mary's tomb,

the Muslims carved a mihrab in the wall.

To understand why the mihrab is here,

we must visit the plateau in the center of Jerusalem.

This is a holy place for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Beneath this shining dome

is the rock where God spoke to Abraham,

and where Jesus preached to his disciples.

And for Muslims, the plateau is sacred for another reason.

- This place is regarded

as the third holiest site for Muslims.

The prophet of Islam, Muhammad, is believed to have traveled

from Mecca to Jerusalem, and then from there,

taken by the angel to the heavens to meet God himself.

And as he traveled to Jerusalem, it is believed

through our traditions that he met every prophet of God,

every messenger of God, including the great prophets

Abraham, Moses, and also Jesus.

- [Narrator] So although Muslims

do not consider Jesus their savior, they revere him.

- It's very clear in the holy Quran,

whenever Jesus is mentioned, in majority of the verses,

God mentions (speaks in foreign language),

Jesus, the son of Mary.

So Mary is revered and respected.

- [Narrator] And that's why Muslims carved a mihrab

within the Virgin Mary's tomb.

- The church belonged to a Christian order,

and for that reason, has to be removed,

has to be taken away.

But the tomb of the Virgin Mary survives.

Because this is also a shrine which is holy to Islam,

there is no reason to destroy the tomb.

- [Narrator] In the streets of Jerusalem,

religious differences and political conflicts are obvious.

But as with the fresco in the museum,

we might not be seeing the whole picture.

The most important part is sometimes

the part we don't see, the part we share.

This idea is alive in Mary's tomb,

a holy place that has been shared

by Christians and Muslims for almost a thousand years.

Up next, the secret of the oasis.

The Israel Museum manages the collection

of an older museum in East Jerusalem.

It is known as the Rockefeller because it was endowed

by the American philanthropist, John D. Rockefeller.

Here, a strange inscription is written in mosaic tiles

from a Jewish town called Ein Gedi.

- And in the synagogues, there is a mosaic pavement.

And the pavement holds a long inscription

in several sections.

One section is particularly intriguing,

and the reason is that it has a curse.

Whoever shall reveal the secret of the town to the Gentiles,

a terrible curse will come upon him.

- [Narrator] What did the Jewish townspeople

not want outsiders to know?

That is our museum secret.

The road to Ein Gedi passes by the Dead Sea

whose waters and mud are reputed to be therapeutic

and are the basis for a lucrative

health and beauty industry known worldwide.

The land around the sea is bone dry

except for this oasis

where the ancient town of Ein Gedi once stood.

Recent archeology has revealed that the town was small

but its synagogue was big.

- A synagogue is the most important building in the village.

It is built also with luxury if you compare

the living rooms over there and the mosaic floor here.

- [Narrator] One mysterious inscription reveals

what will happen to anyone who reveals the town's secret.

The literal translation is complex,

filled with allusions to anger,

punishment and an all-seeing eye.

But the intention is clear.

Anyone who reveals the secret

is as good as dead.

But in a small oasis town,

what secret could be so important?

- From biblical sources,

we know of various plants that were growing in this land.

We know of one plant, the balsam plant.

It was highly regarded.

Apparently, the fragrance was so special

that they wanted it from all over the world.

It was really something unique.

- [Narrator] The balsam plant was the basis

for a perfume called balsama,

which was made exclusively in the town of Ein Gedi.

Marc Antony was so taken with the perfume

that he gave balsama to his lover, Cleopatra.

It would have cost him more than its weight in gold.

Ein Gedi's prosperity came from balsama,

so there was a lot riding on keeping its monopoly.

- Maybe the clue is the enigma of the perfume production.

For something to special, it was a special group of experts,

a professional guild, that was preparing and doing this.

They didn't want the secret of doing it to leak out.

- [Narrator] We would leak the secret of how to make balsama

but we can't

because on an unknown date,

Ein Gedi was attacked and burned to the ground.

- There was a layer of ash about half a meter thick.

All the village was ruined.

Who did it?

I have no idea.

- [Narrator] After Ein Gedi was destroyed,

no more balsama was ever produced.

And over the centuries,

the specific variety of balsam plant used to make balsama

disappeared from the region around the Dead Sea.

So the secret of making balsama was lost forever,

or maybe not.

Today, in the Ein Gedi oasis,

a kibbutz maintains a botanical garden.

Botanist Annot Hast has cultivated balsam seedlings

of an ancient variety discovered in Africa.

(Anna speaks in foreign language)

- [Narrator] But are these balsam plants

the right balsam plants?

Do they contain the essence of a balsama perfume?

(Annot speaks in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Annot has yet to learn

how her ancestors made balsama

but she hopes to exploit the old plants in a new way.

- One of our dreams is to make the perfume from this plant

because we are looking for stores

that connect to the environment

and to our history and to our heritage.

- [Narrator] But will modern Ein Gedians

heed the ancient warning

to keep their production methods to themselves?

Or will they brave the curse and reveal it to the world.

- It's very, very difficult to hold a secret nowadays.

It's not like ancient times.

So I think if it's very difficult to hold it,

why not to share it with everyone.

- [Narrator] And then perhaps modern women can share

in the glamor of Cleopatra.

Next on Museum Secrets, the amulet and the alien.

Our final museum secret may be the strangest one ever.

It's the answer to this question.

What does a tiny archeological treasure have in common

with a science fiction character known as Mr. Spock?

The story begins just one kilometer from the museum,

in an ancient tomb below this church.

A young archeologist discovered a tiny corroded object

about the size of a cigarette butt.

The year was 1979.

Fans may recall that the first Star Trek movie

premiered in 1979.

But that's not the connection

between the artifact and Mr. Spock.

- It really looked like nothing, but it was very curious.

It was pretty clear that this was metal.

So it turned to be a metal sheet tightly wound up.

And of course, there was the challenge to unroll it.

- [Narrator] Curators became excited because, well,

finding scrolls in the holy land often makes history.

- [Announcer] Scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

undertake the painstaking work of piecing together

bits of ancient biblical scrolls

found at a mountain cave near the Dead Sea.

- [Narrator] Showcased in their own building

within the museum grounds

are the world's most famous scrolls.

Discovered in the mid-1900s, these scrolls

were the most significant and earliest biblical texts

in existence, dating back 2,200 years.

The tomb where the metal scroll was found

predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by 400 years,

so curators were anxious to find out

what might be inside the tiny amulet.

- It was sent to several centers in Europe.

They didn't dare touch it.

- [Narrator] Acrimony had ensued when some Dead Sea Scrolls

had fallen apart as they were unrolled,

so it's not surprising that European conservators

were nervous about damaging this fragile scroll.

- It came to the labs of the Israel Museum

where we had decided we'll take the risk

because it was by far too curious

to let this go and not know what it is.

- [Narrator] Head of Conservation David (mumbles)

would boldly go where no conservator had gone before.

(David speaks in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Using a similar roll of metal,

David reenacts the process.

(David speaks in foreign language)

- [Narrator] David unfurled the metal bit by bit

until it was completely flat.

The surface was blank except for a few scratches.

(David speaks in foreign language)

- [Narrator] He could make out the letters of just one word,

(speaks in foreign language).

Yahweh is the Hebrew word for God.

After further examination, other words were deciphered.

- The lower part holds the earliest biblical phrases

ever to be found, so it's of great significance.

And these phrases, known also as the priestly benediction,

are still recited at synagogue to this day.

- [Narrator] And this is where the ancient artifact

begins to connect with Mr. Spock.

- When I was about maybe eight or nine years old,

High Holiday services with my family,

there comes a point in the service where the kohanim,

who are the members of the priestly tribe

of the Hebrew people, get up to bless the congregation.

(man sings in foreign language)

My father said to me, "Don't look."

But I was, you know, I'm eight years old

and there's something really strange going on, so I peeked.

And I saw them doing that with their hands

as they were blessing the congregation,

as they were shouting this prayer.

It was kind of chilling.

I had no idea.

It seemed magical.

- [Narrator] Years later, Leonard Nimoy

would recall his experience on the set of Star Trek.

- And I said to the director,

I said we should have something special

that Vulcans do when they greet each other.

He said, "Well, what do you want?

"What should Vulcans do?"

and I said, "How about that?"

- [Narrator] When Spock makes this sign,

he says a benediction.

- Live long and prosper.

- [Narrator] This is an echo of the benediction

on the ancient metal scroll,

the Lord bestow his favor upon you and grant you peace.

And that's what an ancient archeological treasure

has in common with Mr. Spock.

Mr. Spock may be an alien,

but he is also quintessentially Jewish.

In a museum where religion and history meet,

for every mystery we reveal, far more must remain unspoken.

The secrets of monarchs and messiahs

hidden in plain sight

inside the Israel Museum.

(dramatic music)