Israel's National Library highlights hostages, unveils new book

A national library properly constituted contains the collective memory of the nation it serves. By this measure, the new building in Jerusalem housing the National Library of Israel is a splendid example of such an undertaking. Its new huge structure houses not only some four million books but also numerous spaces for exhibitions, a spacious reading room, electronic databases, a children’s section, and much more. And, in contrast to the old library in Givat Ram, it promises a quick delivery of any of its volumes through the latest technological equipment that allows for immediate location of a book requested.

In addition, it was decided to make use of the books in the library through an art installation called Every Hostage Has a Story, to highlight the estimated 240 hostages being held by Hamas. Scores of black chairs were placed in the middle of the main reading hall, each with a picture of one of the hostages on it, and a book chosen especially for him or her.

“Each book also contains a personal library card that we’ve prepared, each one marked with a return date – NOW,” explains the National Library’s Rachel Neiman. “Some books were selected by relatives; others chosen according to individual personal interests, hobbies; and others in the spirit, title, or content of the book itself. Dorit Gani, the reference librarian and children’s book author, curated the exhibit and was tasked with selecting the books and, when possible, speaking with families, who shared stories of their loved ones.”

The National Library and the rich history of the Land of Israel

To celebrate the opening of the library, a new coffee-table book, 101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel (Scala Arts Publishers), has been published, showing the enormous variety of materials the library possesses. The book includes original manuscripts, examples of Hebrew and Arabic calligraphy, and historical documents related not only to Jewish events but also happenings around the world. There are autographs of famous individuals, illustrations of Haggadot and other precious manuscripts, personal letters, and so forth.

To dip into any one the 334 pages is to enter a world elegantly described in the accompanying texts. The reader may find oneself in front of a 1908 handwritten version of “Hatikva,” Naftali Herz Imber’s poem of longing for the Land of Israel which, having been set to a Romanian folk tune, had become the unofficial anthem of the Zionist Congress. The original nine-stanza poem was eventually cut to two stanzas and was declared the Jewish national anthem in 1933. This particular version of the poem was written by Imber while recuperating in a Jewish hospital in New York at the request of ethno-musicologist Jeannette Robinson-Murphy. Imber took a piece of hospital stationery and jotted down the first two stanzas, ripping off the hospital logo before handing it to her to sing. He autographed the song, thus making it the only such version in the world. Robinson-Murphy later gave it to the National Library, feeling that it belonged in “the Land of Israel, Jerusalem.” 

The Land of Israel is also the location of the circle of Jewish mystics who gathered around Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-72), whose teachings became the lodestone of Kabbalistic lore. Although Luria never wrote down his teachings, his faithful student Haim Vital did so in a multi-volume tome. His version was criticized by Rabbi Menahem di Lonzano (1550-1626), who wrote down Vital’s summary of Luria’s teachings alongside his own emendations where he felt that Vital had misunderstood Luria’s cosmological teachings. This summary, called Sermons, was published in 1610 and attests to the critical role of students in transmitting, and sometimes changing, the ideas of their teachers. 

A little earlier, in 1550, Seder Nashim, a Ladino prayer book for women, was printed in Salonica, Greece. Seder Nashim was the first printed work to translate the prayers of the standard siddur into Ladino – a vernacular language popular in the Balkans, Turkey, and Greece. It also contains summaries of laws associated with women, such as lighting Sabbath candles, dough offering, and menstrual purity, plus a translation of the Passover Haggadah. Apparently translated by Rabbi Meir Benvenisti, it shows a concern for women’s spiritual life in a radical new way.

Not all the manuscripts in the book are whole. One intriguing example is a burnt scrap of handwritten notes that are the remains of a monumental project undertaken by the young S.Y. Agnon and Martin Buber, at the request of Haim Nahman Bialik, all living in Germany at the time. The project, a collection of Hassidic tales, was never finished, since a fire rampaged through Agnon’s house in Bad Hamburg, destroying his entire library and his many papers, including the first volume of his Corpus Hassidicum. This remnant, one of 41 such pages, are what remains of the project to which Agnon never returned. The fire, however, marked Agnon’s return to the Land of Israel in 1924.

Bialik is again mentioned as the publisher of the Book of Things, a children’s book illustrated by [Martha] Tom Freud (Sigmund Freud’s niece) in 1922 in Berlin through a publishing house called Ophir. It featured Bialik’s Hebrew poetry illustrated by Freud. Her work is considered as one of the pinnacles of 20th century German art in the field of children’s illustrated books. Although this book shows a beautiful side of life, it unfortunately was not reflected in her own short life, which is tragic. But at least we are left with her delicate and colorful illustrated books. 

Among the number of handwritten manuscripts shown in the book is that of the great codifier Maimonides (1138-1204), whose Commentary of the Mishna is one of three major legal and philosophical works written by him (the others being the Mishna Torah and The Guide to the Perplexed). The commentary, written in his hand, is an eloquent testament to the nature of Jewish law, ethics, and theology. The manuscript has an interesting history, moving from Egypt to Aleppo. Three sections were then brought to England in the 17th century, where they were bequeathed to Oxford University. The two remaining sections were discovered by Rabbi Jacob Toledano in Damascus, who sold them to bibliophile David Sassoon in 1908, whose family decided to auction them in 1975 in Switzerland. The Israeli minister of education, mayor Teddy Kollek, and others, realizing their importance for the Jewish people, raised the funds to purchase them and bring them to the National Library. 

Of the many Jewish claims to be the Messiah, among the most famous is that of Sabbatai Zevi (Shabtai Zvi (1626-76). His fame was bolstered by Nathan of Gaza, a young Kabbalist who took on the role of Elijah the prophet, who proclaimed Sabbatai as the Messiah. A broadsheet proclaiming his elevation, with his portrait alongside that of Nathan, was hung in a public place to spread the word of his coming. This particular broadsheet is printed in Dutch, presumably by a Dutch Christian, a testament to the great interest in this phenomenon even beyond the Jewish world, where it had attracted thousands of followers. 

In addition to these unique manuscripts, there are letters from Mozart to his wife; a check written by Ben-Gurion to his ideological foe, poet Uri Zvi Greenberg; an early Zionist Rosh Hashanah card, complete with prophetic graphics, alongside depictions of early pioneers in pre-state Israel; an 1878 advertisement in Hebrew, Arabic, and English for a performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by an Egyptian theatrical troupe in Jerusalem; an early Latin language map of the Holy Land from 1486, depicting various biblical episodes highlighted with miniature paintings; and sketches in situ by renowned Israeli cartoonist “Dosh” (Katriel Gardosh) of the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in June 1967. 

All these and many more treasures are brought together in this precious volume, a tribute to the National Library’s amazing collection of memorabilia, and a fitting celebration of the opening of the new building.  ■