Many years ago, when my children were preteens and with us on a summer trip to Israel, our scholar-neighbor invited us to see where he worked at the National Library of Israel’s (NLI) building at the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus.
Following instructions, we entered the old building, walked the dark halls, and arrived at the microfiche room he had designated as the meeting place. There, he proudly opened the door, unfurled some spools, and took 10 minutes showing my polite children his research space.
Fast forward many years, and my son and daughter have since taken our neighbor’s love of information and inquiry with them as they, like tens of thousands of others, embraced the beauty, light, and solace of the NLI’s new campus, which opened a year and a half ago.
New library campus
The new campus was planned to open to fanfare in the fall of 2023. It opened, with no fanfare, on October 29, just weeks after the attack by Hamas. In a country torn apart, the art installations, the muted and exquisite reading rooms, national treasures such as songs by Naomi Shemer in her handwriting, and the excellent coffee in the café coalesce to create not just an addition to the culture of the country but also as a space of such-needed refuge.
The war is never far from the sight and minds of visitors and staff, but the quiet exhibition dedicated to the hostages gives contemplative and heart space to mourn.
Within weeks of opening, a chair for every hostage was set out behind the glass walls of the lowest level reading room with a book on the seat handpicked for each person held by Hamas. For the youngest Bibas child, a highchair. People entering the building would immediately see the seats and books, and the exhibit soon became a critical stopping point for the NLI’s visitors. As some hostages returned, or their deaths were announced, their seats were removed by the library staff.
The exhibit, with seats and books for the dozens of hostages still captive as of this writing, remains.
“Before October 7, 2023, we were looking forward to the grand opening of a magnificent new 21st-century library building, one that would be worthy of ‘the People of the Book,’ says Oren Weinberg, the library’s CEO. “I don’t know whether to call it brave or foolhardy, but on October 29 we took a leap of faith and opened our reading halls to a waiting public. I have never regretted that decision."
Packed with readers
“Since that day,” says Weinberg, “the NLI has been packed with readers, school groups, tour groups, event attendees, and casual visitors. What was once the domain of academics alone is now a modern, open space that makes knowledge and discovery easy and accessible, onsite and online.
"I can only attribute this success to the fact that – just as we intentionally have no surrounding fences or walls – this a welcoming space for all of Israel’s communities. Entrance to the main sections is free, and the books, collections, and the reading room spaces are open and available to everyone.”
“There is no other place like it,” says Jay Berkovitz, a professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He regularly works in the library’s reading rooms on his sixth book, about Rabbi Yair Chaim Bacharach, an illustrious 17th-century German rabbi.
Berkovitz, who researched previous books at the old NLI, says: “There’s more human interaction here” and calls the building “a national property everyone feels a part of.”
While research space in the reading rooms is grabbed within an hour or less of the library’s daily opening – credit silence, work space, plugs for laptops, and the café’s excellent coffee and pastries – the library is also a venue for conferences, musicians such as Shalom Hanoch and Idan Raichel, and exhibits such as the one before Passover, which showcased volumes from the NLI’s collection of Haggadot.
In the weeks after the war began, the library opened its spaces to artists from the South and in quiet ways continues to share with its visitors the impact of the war. A beautiful scholar’s space that houses priceless collections became the venue for a piyyut, a poem set to music by poet Yigal Harush, about Kibbutz Be’eri, which was overrun, and many members captured and killed on October 7.
The library has also helped its visitors find refuge from the pain, such as an exhibit last summer that created sittable chairs depicting well-known Israeli children’s books.
Another exhibit this winter showcased Franz Kafka. And always worth a visit is the longest textile work in Israel, designed to absorb noise and preserve quiet but also reflect the beauty of the building.
Diversity in people
Adina Kanefield, CEO of NLI USA, the American partnership arm of the library, says that for her, the beauty of the library includes “looking at both the number of people and the diversity of the people… and the role that the library is playing in enriching those lives.
Kanefield says that in a single day, she has seen a group of young Israeli Jewish students, Israeli Arab students, a mission from the US, and haredi Israelis looking at manuscripts in the collections.
In the Davidson exhibition hall, says Kanefield, when you enter, there are 5th to 8th-century incantation bowls that have etched messages to protect the person who owns the bowl from the evil spirits that might enter their home. Recently she saw a group of middle school boys looking intently at the bowls, artifacts they might not otherwise have seen.
The library has also become a critical destination for the too few visitors to Israel since the war began. Kanefield explains that, rather than tourists on vacation, most people coming to Israel now have come “to bear witness, to show solidarity.”
Most have first gone to the site of the Supernova festival and to the trampled kibbutzim, says Kanefield, and saw the destruction, the sadness.
Many who visit the library do so at the end of their trip, “and they describe the library as a bookend to their experience in Israel. Seeing the horror and the devastation, and then coming to the library, knowing that our people have survived so much over so long, it represents hope for a better time.”