"Matmonei haaretz: Massa el otsarot ne'elamim" (Hidden Treasures of Israel) by Nirit Shalev-Khalifa, Mapa Publishers, 232 pages, NIS 119.

I have a good friend who worships Agnon. When his favorite author is mentioned in a conversation, my friend is in seventh heaven. When Agnon is not mentioned, he waits for a suitable pause in the discourse and then says something about Agnon, hoping that this spark will ignite a literary blaze. We recently sat on the beach, enjoying a beer and listening to the waves. "A short while ago I reread Agnon's 'Shirah,'" he said suddenly. "What a masterpiece!"

"Listen," I replied, "for your birthday I am going to take you to Shai Agnon House. Have you ever been there?"

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"No, never," he confessed.

"What!? Are you trying to tell me that you have never been there? That you never saw the books into which sheets of note paper have been stuffed? Or the high desk on which he wrote standing up?"

"Agnon wrote standing up?!" his ardent admirer was stunned. "Sure, that's a well-known fact," I retorted smugly.

The truth is that I would never have visited Agnon House had I not been taken there when I was an elementary school pupil in the course of a school outing. Even as a child who had never read a word of Agnon's works, I was amazed by the shelves filled with books with faded covers and by the holy atmosphere of creativity pervading that place. What would my learned friend have gained from a visit there? An uplifting of his spirits? A thrill down his spine? A renewed understanding of the artistic skills of his beloved author? Certainly something of all the above, yet he never traveled to Jerusalem for a visit there. However, Agnon House is not alone in its anonymity. Many of the really fascinating places in Israel are seen only by a negligible number of visitors. This is totally unjustified; however, the sad fact is that they are simply swallowed up by the more familiar tourist attractions.

Nirit Shalev-Khalifa, a well-known scholar of Israeli history and a curator of historical exhibitions, has invested considerable time and energy and has come up with no less than 96 places that all richly deserve the title "treasure." In other words, these are tiny museum collections that the public can easily access. Along with Agnon House, there are the homes of Haim Nahman Bialik and Chaim Weizmann and the museums of the Irgun and Lehi, although the author does not focus exclusively on official collections. She also tells us about small art museums, collections of antiquities in monasteries in Jerusalem, the unique collection of anchors in Ein Gev, two puppet museums and a puppet theater museum, a museum in Safed dedicated to Hungarian Jewry's heritage and even about the Compulite-Danor Stage-Lighting-Museum in Hod Hasharon.

Few books are themselves a splendid example of their subject matter. "Hidden Treasures of Israel" is precisely this sort of paradox: It is a treasure-chest of Israel's treasures, a tiny museum of tiny museums and a special collection of special collections. The elegant design, for which Avner Haberfeld is responsible, will make readers feel as if they are wandering through exhibition halls jam-packed with fascinating items. Every double-page includes the photograph of a sign with the name of the site. The signs look like the signs regularly placed beside museum exhibits.

Like any self-respecting museum, Shalev-Khalifa's preserves its exhibitions from loss or oblivion. Many of the sites mentioned in her book suffer from budget difficulties and neglect. Israel has the largest number of museums per capita; however, the statistics are in serious danger of changing if the Israeli public's interest cannot be aroused. For families debating what to do on a school holiday or for curious, enthusiastic young people like my Agnon fan, the book presents nearly 100 unusual, fascinating places to visit. If readers follow up on the recommendations, they will undoubtedly help reinforce our country's beauty and bizarreness.

The texts treat all the places cited, even the most unusual ones, with the same degree of deep respect, which slightly dulls the particular uniqueness of each place. The color and strangeness of several of them are what make them so attractive, and at least some of their managers and preservers are aware of this fact. Whereas Shalev-Khalifa has adopted a solid, informative approach, Orit Geva's camera does not lie and manages to capture the unique humor of Israel's treasures: A storefront, mustached mannequin in a Haganah uniform grants a historical dimension to Bat-Yam's Contemporary Art Museum, while Beit Gordon in Kibbutz Deganya Aleph has a frightening collection of animals in formaldehyde.

Behind each unique museum there is, of course, at least one unique individual. Shalev-Khalifa presents the tales of several of the collections and sometimes offers us the small photograph of a bearded Bohemian, an elegant sculptress in clay, or a Bedouin historian, although at times the book appears more like an introduction to a much larger volume on the discoverers of Israel's hidden treasures. "Hidden Treasures" teaches us that our land has been and is abundantly blessed with fascinating individuals, some of whom we have never been privileged to meet: the "White Fathers;" Karaites; kibbutzniks who fought for the honor of displaying Joseph Trumpeldor's prosthesis in their kibbutz; and collectors of medals, the memorabilia of Israel's presidents, and ancient, hideous medical equipment.

In the final analysis, the book reveals how Israel is itself a unique, colorful museum where admission is always free. A meeting with this other Israel is fascinating even if you do not visit all the sites mentioned in "Hidden Treasures," which is a lovely reference book to read while seated in your favorite armchair or standing up, if that is your preference.

Yuval Ben-Ami's book, "Susana, Don't You Cry," has been published in Hebrew by Xargol.