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In 2000, Rabbi Marvin Hier held a dinner in Los Angeles for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the anti-Semitism monitor and Jewish advocacy group he leads. As the evening drew to a close, Hier handed out baseball caps with “Winnick Institute” written on the front: the name of the tolerance museum the SWC was planning in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood.
Unlike the Los Angeles Tolerance Museum, Hier said, the Jerusalem one would not touch on the Holocaust, but would look to the future.
“In the 20th century, the biggest issue was the external threat,” Hier told the Los Angeles Times at the time. “There were wars, there was the Holocaust. But most historians and philosophers think that in the 21st century, the most important question will be: ‘Can we live with each other?’ The Winnick Institute Jerusalem will focus on the great internal question.”