Private, Family, and Public Museum Tours — Israel Museum, the Met, and Beyond

You’ve probably walked through this museum before. You just haven’t seen it yet.

The Israel Museum holds thousands of years of history — Jewish, biblical, archaeological, artistic. So does the Met. So does almost every great museum. The objects are there. The stories connecting them usually aren’t — not on the labels, and not on the audio guide. A well-guided tour doesn’t add information on top of what you’re seeing. It changes what you’re capable of seeing in the first place.

A tour group at the Israel Museum, hands raised
Museum Tours as They Should Be
Most personal

Private & Family Tours

Couples, families, friends, or a curious traveller on a half-day in Jerusalem. Real conversations, real artifacts, your pace.

Plan your tour →

By inquiry ·

VIP & Corporate

Private clients, embassies, executives, and corporate teams. Three tiers, full concierge, after-hours arrangements available. Discretion assured.

See VIP tours →

Jewish day schools

For Schools

Museum tours, in-school presentations, and virtual programs for Jewish day schools. Connecting Tanach to real artifacts, real geography, and real cultures.

Day school programs →

Open to all

סיורים ציבוריים

Join an upcoming public tour at the Israel Museum. Currently running: The Image of a City — Maps, Prints, and the Idea of Jerusalem.

See the calendar →

Family Celebration

Bar / Bat Mitzvah

A museum tour built around the bar or bat mitzvah child — preparation, framing, and a tour they help lead. Special touches available.

Plan a B’nai Mitzvah experience →

Homeschoolers

Homeschool Groups

Online classes weekly + monthly meetups at museums in Israel. US homeschool communities can organize tours when I visit — special homeschool rates apply.

See homeschool programs →

Why a museum tour

Israel is a country to walk in, taste, and breathe. Museums don’t replace that. But there is so much history packed into this land — and into the wider story of which it is part — that the question for most visitors becomes simply: where do we even begin?

A great museum puts thousands of years of human history in one room. Each museum has its own character. The Israel Museum is encyclopedic: the full sweep of the history of the Land of Israel, contemporary Israeli art, collections from cultures around the world, the Billy Rose Art Garden, the Shrine of the Book — home to the Dead Sea Scrolls — and an outdoor scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem. No single visit takes it all in, which is exactly why a guide who knows where to look makes the difference.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art operates on a different scale entirely. One of the largest museums on earth — and among the most visited — you could spend a week there and still not exhaust it. I work across many of its collections: the Egyptian Wing, the Greco-Roman galleries, European paintings, and more. The Ancient Near East galleries are currently closed for a major renovation, reopening in 2027 — that’s the wing where the empires and cultures of the biblical world come to life.

“Understanding the geography and cultures in which Jewish history and Tanach take place is the context for the text.”
— David Willner, MA

The Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem takes a different approach — tracing the archaeology of the lands where the biblical story unfolds, from the cradle of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia through the Byzantine and Sassanid empires.

There’s a moment it clicks. You’re standing in front of an Assyrian relief of Sennacherib — the king who attacked King Hezekiah. A brick from Babylon stamped with the name Nebuchadnezzar. Coins minted by the Maccabees. Stories you grew up on, right in front of you. We engage with the past differently when it’s within reach. That’s the difference between reading history and experiencing it. That’s what I call sTOURytelling™.

Museum tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
VIP group tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guiding at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Playful group at the Israel Museum
Nachliel doing a handstand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Kids engaged in a museum tour
“Although the goal of the Met is to present art and not teach history, history is there for us — especially with the right guide. We were lucky to have with us Nachliel Selavan. Our tour was focused on the four kingdoms. We took many tangents beginning with tracing Abraham’s journey from Ur Kasdim to Haran and down into Canaan to Egypt and back. We traced the steps of the fleeing prophet Jonah from Israel to Tarshish and back across the fertile crescent to Ninveh. We stood in the corridor of an Assyrian throne room experiencing what the Jewish kings must have felt during the time of Sennacherib. And then we began our journey in the world of Nebuchadnezzar who insisted that his name be everywhere, trying to imagine his world and our people in their first exile…We moved from Babylon to Shushan, seeing a palace larger than we ever imagined and understanding how a party could go on for six months…We traveled to Macedonia with King Philip II and then saw how Alexander the Great conquered and changed the world…We saw the beauty of Yefet. We saw that which influenced us and undoubtedly influenced our ancestors, leading to a civil war which culminated in Hanukah…We met with Nero, Vespasian and Titus, discussing the Talmud’s stories of them. We heard how the Torah was saved by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai and how the oral Torah was saved through Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi and Antoninus — his friend and Caesar — and we discussed who the Antoninus of the Talmud may have really been. It was truly a journey through the four kingdoms, and one I will continue to explore…”
— Rabbi David Bibi, Senior Rabbi, Benai Asher of Long Beach · Resident Scholar, Edmond J. Safra Synagogue, Manhattan

Museums I guide at

My home base is Jerusalem, but I guide regularly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — and have worked with synagogues, day schools, federations, and community organizations throughout North America.

In Jerusalem
  • The Israel Museum
  • מוזיאון ארצות המקרא, ירושלים
  • The Tower of David Museum
  • The Rockefeller Museum (currently closed to public tours)
Around Israel
  • Museum of the Land of Israel (Tel Aviv)
  • ANU Museum of the Jewish People (Tel Aviv)
  • Museum of Philistine Culture (Ashdod)
  • Hecht Museum (Haifa)
  • Footsteps in the Valley Museum (Gan Hashlosha)
United States
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC)
  • American Museum of Natural History (NYC)
  • Brooklyn Museum
  • Getty Villa (CA)
  • Carlos Museum, Emory University (GA)
  • Walters Art Museum (MD)
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  • Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum (ISAC) formerly Oriental Institute (Chicago)
  • Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE) formerly Harvard Semitic Museum (Cambridge, MA)
Museums Worldwide
  • Royal Ontario Museum (Canada)
  • British Museum (London)
  • and more across Europe

מוזיאונים שבהם אני מדריך

ירושלים היא הבסיס שלי, ולכן רוב הזמן אני נמצא בקרבת המוזיאונים שם. אבל אני גם מדריך באופן קבוע גם במוזיאון המטרופוליטן בניו יורק — ועבדתי עם בתי כנסת, בתי ספר יהודיים, פדרציות וארגונים קהילתיים ברחבי צפון אמריקה.

בירושלים
  • מוזיאון ישראל
  • מוזיאון ארצות המקרא, ירושלים
  • מוזיאון מגדל דוד
  • מוזיאון רוקפלר (סגור כעת לסיורים ציבוריים)
ברחבי הארץ
  • מוזיאון ארץ ישראל (תל אביב)
  • אָנוּ – מוזיאון העם היהודי (תל אביב)
  • המוזיאון לתרבות הפלשתים (אשדוד)
  • מוזיאון הכט (חיפה)
  • מוזיאון עקבות בעמק (גן השלושה)
ארצות הברית
  • מוזיאון המטרופוליטן (ניו יורק)
  • מוזיאון הטבע (ניו יורק)
  • מוזיאון ברוקלין
  • הוילה הרומית (קליפורניה)
  • מוזיאון קרלוס, אוניברסיטת אמורי (ג’ורג’יה)
  • מוזיאון האמנות וולטרס (מרילנד)
  • מוזיאון בוסטון לאמנויות יפות
  • המכון לחקר התרבויות הקדומות (ISAC) לשעבר המכון המזרחני (שיקגו)
  • מוזיאון הרווארד למזרח הקדום (HMANE) לשעבר המוזיאון השמי של הרווארד (קיימברידג’, מסצ’וסטס)
ברחבי העולם
  • המוזיאון המלכותי של אונטריו (קנדה)
  • המוזיאון הבריטי (לונדון)
  • ועוד ברחבי אירופה

לקוחות מספרים

Beyond museums — archaeological sites and national parks

In addition to museums, I also guide programs at select archaeological sites and national parks — including Megiddo, Lachish, Hazor, the Old City of Jerusalem (where I grew up), Caesarea Harbor, Tel Beersheva, and others. These are educational programs built around the artifacts and the texts; I can meet your group at a site with a prepared educational program built around the archaeology, the texts, and the landscape — but moving between sites and planning the logistics of a day out requires a licensed tour guide. I’m always glad to connect people with excellent guides for that kind of program.

Not sure which path is yours?

Tell me what you have in mind — the form below routes you to the right place automatically.

Plan your tour →

להישאר בעניינים

שתי רשימות תפוצה, שני קהלים. בחרו את המתאימה לכם — או את שתיהן.

עדכונים על סיורים בארץ (אנגלית)

תאריכים חדשים של סיורים פתוחים במוזיאון ישראל, מוזיאון ארצות המקרא, מוזיאון הכט, ושותפים נוספים — ישירות אליכם, לפני שהם נפתחים לקהל הרחב. בערך מייל אחד בחודש.

    עדכונים על סיורים בארה"ב (אנגלית)

    כל שנה אני מוביל סדרת סיורים במוזיאון המטרופוליטן בניו יורק, וגם במוזיאונים נוספים בהתאם לתוכניות הנסיעה שלי. בדרך כלל מייל או שניים בשנה.

      עגלת קניות

      תפריט נגישות

      חזרה לראש העמוד