Library

Books come and books go. Sadly, the necessities of publishing require that even prizewinners go out of print; this is especially true of Jewish children's books. Perhaps you have some of these well-loved stories in your family libraries and would be willing to donate hard cover editions to ourpreschool and learning center collections. Here are some of the titles we can use: And Shira Imagined by Giora Carmi; Chicken Man by Michelle Edwards (any of Michelle Edwards books for Jewish children are welcome); Cakes and Miracles by Barbara Diamond Goldin; any of Marilyn Hirsch's Jewish children's books; The Castle on Hester Street by Linda Heller; Tikvah Means Hope by Patricia Polacco; Carol Snyder's Ike and Mama books, Jou rney to the Golden Land and The Old Synagogue by Richard Rosenblum; and The Little Old Man and His Dreams by Lillian Ross. These books just scratch the surface of titles that are no longer being published.

We welcome your donations and questions about other books in our collections. For more information, you can call me in the library any weekday morning except Friday at 972.234.1542 x 230.

The world of Judaism is expanding in cyberspace. You can use the Internet to discover Jewish writers, ideas, short films and sound clips from the past.

1. The catalog of Jewish National and University Library's National Sound Archive. (English interface)
(Hebrew interface) The JNUL catalog can also accessed via the Library homepage. The National Sound Archive (known also as the 'Phonoteka'), a catalog of the Jewish National and University Library’s National Sound Archive contains thousands of hours of sound recordings, both commercial and field recordings. To search recordings in this collection, select "National Sound Archive" at the "Select Database:" option on the main catalog screen. Within the NSA catalog it is also possible to limit searching to a tradition subset such as Ashkenazi, Italian, Yemenite, etc. The NSA catalog contains also a detailed index by musical traditions and locations. This unique index was designed with the help of the musicologists Dr. Essica Marks and Prof. Eliyahu Schleifer to meet both the needs of scholars of Jewish music and the general public. Access to the recordings themselves is currently on-site only.

2. The Jewish National and University Library is currently exhibiting "RaSHI - Teacher of Israel" (Raban SHel Yisrael) featuring manuscripts and printed books from the library's collections. The digital exhibit commemorates the 900th anniversary of the death of RaSHI and is part of the JNUL's "Treasures of the Library" series of the David and Fela Shapell Family Digitization Project. Many of the manuscripts and books displayed have also been digitized in their entirety and are accessible via the exhibit site. The digitized printed books are also incorporated in the JNUL's Digitized Books Repository and the JNUL catalog.

Also available from the Jewish National and University Library is a digitized version of the "Mahzor Worms," one of the Library's most treasured manuscripts, accessible in Hebrew and English at the library site, or directly at http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/worms. The Worms Mahzor is a 13th century festival prayerbook for the use of hazzanim, containing mostly cycles of piyyutim (liturgical hymns). It consists of 2 volumes of different origin, written on parchment in beautiful Ashkenazi calligraphy, with illumination and decoration in ink and color. The Mahzor was in use in the community of Worms, Germany until the synagogue's destruction on Kristallnacht, Nov. 1938. It was rescued by the city's archivist, who hid it in the cathedral. In 1957, following legal proceedings in Germany, the manuscript was transferred to the JNUL.

The JNUL archives department currently holds some four hundred personal archives, chiefly of Jewish figures who were active and influential in a variety of spheres: Zionist leaders, rabbis, scientists, philosophers, writers and poets, journalists and critics, musicians and others. An alphabetic list of names with brief accompanying details is now accessible at: http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/heb/archives-db.html

3. A podcast called The Book of Life is available at http://www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com/. The interviews are by Heidi Estrin, a librarian at Congregation B’nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida. The most recent edition features storytellers Simms Taback, prize-winning author/illustrator; Karen Golden, Sharon Elswit, author of the award-winning Jewish Story Finder; and Gali Cooks, director of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation's literacy project, The PJ Library. You can sign up on the website to get email alerts when new episodes are posted. Or you can subscribe through iTunes to have new episodes automatically downloaded to your computer or iPod (or other mp3 players).

Who knew? You can view priceless artifacts from Jewish history, enjoy hilarious anecdotes told by Jewish storytellers, listen to old and new Jewish music…all on the Internet and all brought to you by librarians from around the world. Enjoy.

Albi Assmann