By the time Pope John Paul II made his pilgrimage to Israel in March 2000, he was a frail 79 years old. The short note he placed in Jerusalem’s Western Wall — a lament for Jewish suffering, and message of interfaith amity — was signed with an unsteady hand, the result of Parkinson’s disease and age-related illnesses.

Before that historic visit — the only papal trip to Israel, to date — John Paul II’s life was filled with many quieter, and less iconic, efforts to repair and further Catholic-Jewish relations, as an exhibit that opened last night at The Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust shows. “A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II & the Jewish People” documents the late pontiff’s life and its points of intersection with, and acts of good will toward, the Jewish community.

The exhibit, whose title refers to a line in a speech the pope gave at a 1993 ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, begins in Wadowice, Poland. That town, 20 miles southeast of Auschwitz, and home to 10,000 Catholics and 2,000 Jews early last century, is where Karol Wojtyla — John Paul II’s given name — was born and raised.

Wadowice’s religious communities were relatively integrated, with Jews and Catholics attending many of the same schools and social gatherings. As a youngster, the future pope played goalie on the town’s Jewish soccer team, and established close friendships with Jewish peers, according to the 2,000-square-foot, candid photograph- and text-heavy exhibit.

“A Blessing to One Another” is divided into four parts. From Wadowice, it transitions into the pontiff’s life in occupied Poland. Amid the backdrop of the murderous Nazi regime that claimed the lives of many of his Jewish friends and neighbors, the former drama student decided to devote his life to the Catholic ministry.

In addition to detailing the plight of the Jews during this period — visitors walk through a replica of the gate to Krakow’s Jewish ghetto — the exhibit pays respect to the regime’s Catholic victims. Displayed side-by-side in a glass case are Jewish prayer books, Catholic rosary beads, and other religious artifacts confiscated by the Nazis.

Through photographs, documents, and taped oral histories, the show tracks Wojtyla’s rise through the Church’s hierarchy, and his efforts to repair some of the long-gaping rifts between Catholics and Jews. It tells of his participation in Second Vatican Council, out of which came the church’s seminal declaration decrying anti-Semitism, and his visit to a Krakow synagogue, following a spate of anti-Semitic incidents in 1960s Poland. In the late 1960s, the pope reconnected with a Jewish childhood friend, Jerzy Kluger, who survived the war in a Siberian labor camp, and now lives in Rome. The two men remained close until the pope’s death last year.

A fourth and final section is devoted to John Paul II’s 26-year papacy. It discusses the pope’s groundbreaking 1986 visit to Rome’s central synagogue, picturing him hand-in-hand with the city’s then-chief rabbi; his long-awaited decision to establish diplomatic ties between the Holy See and Israel in 1993; and ultimately, his journey to Israel and his trip to the Western Wall.

There’s a mock Western Wall, and museum-goers are encouraged to place in it their written prayers. These notes will be transferred to the Western Wall in Jerusalem at the conclusion of the exhibit, exhibit organizers said.

A brainchild of a Holocaust studies scholar, Yaffa Eliach, “A Blessing to One Another,” made its debut at Xavier University last spring. It traveled to the Pope John Paul II Center in Washington, and to Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, before arriving at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — the first Jewish institution to host the exhibit.

Exclusively for its New York run, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem, loaned the museum the now-famous note John Paul II embedded in the Western Wall. “We are deeply saddened,” it reads, “by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking for your forgiveness we commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

Until February 23 (36 Battery Place, 646-437-4200). The museum will sponsor a public forum on Pope John Paul II’s legacy today at 7:30 p.m. Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish theologians will take part in program, which is free for museum members, and $5 for non-members.