Raising the curtain on Picassos and other veiled masterpieces in Iran
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.
Religion and archaeology correspondent Rossella Tercatin joins host Jessica Steinberg for today's episode.
Tercatin discusses the efforts of Queen Farah Phalavi, the third wife of the former Shah of Iran, who used her art degree and wealth from soaring oil prices before the Islamic revolution, to assemble an art collection of masterpieces for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, now hidden for much of the last 47 years.
She also reports on a new haggadah by Bar-Ilan University biblical scholar Prof. Joshua Berman that examines what the Torah and Haggadah tell us about Egypt and Egyptian culture, and their influence on the story of Passover and the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt.
Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates.
For further reading:
One of the most inaccessible art collections in the world awaits liberation in Tehran
How the Exodus story subverts pharaonic texts to mock ancient Egypt
Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.
IMAGE: A visitor walks past China's late leader, Mao Zedong painting series by American artist Andy Warhol at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran on October 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, welcome to the Times of Israel's Daily Briefing. It is Thursday, April 2nd, and I'm Jessica Steinberg. |
| 0:09.4 | We're recording this a day or two before the Passover holiday. Today is the first day of |
| 0:16.1 | Pasachach, and I'm here with Rasella Turkatine. Hello. Hello. Ressela is our archaeology and religions reporter, |
| 0:23.4 | and she's going to be talking a little bit about the religion's side of her beat today. |
| 0:28.7 | Not going to go into headlines, because on this particular moment, |
| 0:33.1 | in this particular war, we really don't know what will be on Thursday. |
| 0:40.7 | So know that we are going to be talking about a story that Rasella wrote regarding the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. It's an |
| 0:47.3 | institution full of masterpieces that have basically not been seen for most of the last 47 years |
| 0:53.9 | since the Islamic Revolution. |
| 0:56.1 | We'll talk about all of that in a minute, as well as a new Passover Hagada |
| 1:01.6 | that really delves into the Egyptian side of the story and what parts of it are relevant to the |
| 1:08.5 | Hagada that we read today. So stay with us. |
| 1:15.2 | Okay. This episode is brought to you by Jewish Communal Fund, the preferred donor-advised |
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