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The National Library of Israel (NLI; ; ), formerly Jewish National and University Library (JNUL; ), is the library dedicated to collecting the cultural treasures of
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
and of
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset A heritage asset is an item which has value because of its contribution to a nation's society, knowledge and/or culture. Such items are usually physical assets, but some countries also ...
. The library holds more than 5 million books, and is located in the Government complex (Kiryat HaMemshala) near the
Knesset The Knesset ( , ) is the Unicameralism, unicameral legislature of Israel. The Knesset passes all laws, elects the President of Israel, president and Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister, approves the Cabinet of Israel, cabinet, and supe ...
. The National Library owns the world's largest collections of Hebraica and Judaica, and is the repository of many rare and unique manuscripts, books and artifacts.


History


B'nai Brith library (1892–1925)

The establishment of a Jewish National Library in Jerusalem was the brainchild of (1844–1919). His idea was creating a "home for all works in all languages and literatures which have Jewish authors, even though they create in foreign cultures." Chazanovitz collected some 15,000 volumes which later became the core of the library. The B'nai Brith library, founded in
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
in 1892, was the first public library in the region of Palestine to serve the Jewish community. The library was located on B'nai Brith street, between the Meah Shearim neighborhood and the Russian Compound. Ten years later, the Bet Midrash Abrabanel library, as it was then known, moved to Ethiopia Street.


Hebrew University library (1925–2007)

In 1920, when plans were drawn up for the Hebrew University, the B'nai Brith collection became the basis for a university library. The books were moved to
Mount Scopus Mount Scopus ( ', "Mount of the Watchmen/ Sentinels"; ', lit. "Mount Lookout", or ' "Mount of the Scene/Burial Site", or "Mount Syenite") is a mountain (elevation: above sea level) in northeast Jerusalem. Between the 1948 Arab–Israeli ...
when the university opened five years later. In 1948, when access to the university campus on Mount Scopus was blocked, most of the books were moved to the university's temporary quarters in the Terra Sancta building in Rehavia. By that time, the university collection included over one million books. For lack of space, some of the books were placed in storerooms around the city. In 1960, they were moved to the new JNUL building in Givat Ram. In the late 1970s, when the new university complex on Mount Scopus was inaugurated and the faculties of Law, Humanities and Social Science returned there, departmental libraries opened on that campus and the number of visitors to the Givat Ram library dropped. In the 1990s, the building suffered from maintenance problems such as rainwater leaks and insect infestation.


National Library legal status (2007)

In 2007 the library was officially recognized as The National Library of the State of Israel after the passage of the National Library Law. The law, which came into effect on 23 July 2008, changed the library's name to "National Library of Israel" and turned it temporarily to a
subsidiary company A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...
of the University, later to become a fully independent
community interest company A community interest company (CIC, pronounced "see-eye-see", or colloquially, "kick") is a form of social enterprise in the United Kingdom intended "for people wishing to establish businesses which trade with a social purpose..., or to carry on ...
, jointly owned by the
Government of Israel The Cabinet of Israel (; ) is the cabinet which exercises Executive (government), executive authority in the State of Israel. It consists of Minister (government), ministers who are chosen and led by the Prime Minister of Israel, prime ministe ...
(50%), the Hebrew University (25%) and other organizations.


New building

In 2014, the project for a new home of the Library in Jerusalem was unveiled. The 34,000 square meters building, was designed by the
Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...
-based architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The cornerstone laying ceremony took place in 2016. The completion date was postponed a number of times and the old library building at Givat Ram continued to be used till September 2023. The grand opening events planned for the week of 22 October were cancelled due to the
Gaza war The Gaza war is an armed conflict in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel fought since 7 October 2023. A part of the unresolved Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflict, Gaza–Israel conflicts dating ...
and the new building opened its doors to the public on 29 October 2023, with service and capacity limited due to war related limitations.


Temporary closure (2020)

In August 2020, the National Library announced its immediately forthcoming closure "until further notice" due to the ongoing financial and government crisis.Hen, Yitzhak,
Israel's National Library Is Closing Down. How Much Do You Care?
", ''Haaretz'', 18 August 2020.
Oster, Marcy,
National Library of Israel to suspend services, put 300 workers on unpaid leave
", ''Times of Israel'', 6 August 2020.
The closure lasted for a number of weeks. A small skeleton staff continued coming to the building but most of the employees either worked from home or took partial or full paid leave. The library, mainly the reference, education and culture departments provided online services during this period.


Goals and objectives

The library's mission is to secure copies of all material published in Israel, in any language; all publications on the subject of Israel, the
Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definition ...
,
Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...
and the Jewish people, published in any language, in any country in the world; and all material published in
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
or any of the languages spoken in the
Jewish Diaspora The Jewish diaspora ( ), alternatively the dispersion ( ) or the exile ( ; ), consists of Jews who reside outside of the Land of Israel. Historically, it refers to the expansive scattering of the Israelites out of their homeland in the Southe ...
(such as
Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
and Ladino). By law, two copies of all printed matter published in Israel must be deposited in the National Library. In 2001, the law was amended to include audio and video recordings, and other non-print media. Many manuscripts, including some of the library's unique volumes such the thirteenth century Worms Mahzor, have been scanned and are available on the library's website. Due to be completed in 2023, the National Library of Israel is digitizing over 2,500 rare manuscripts and books which will be available online for free. The works are written in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu and date from the ninth to twentieth centuries.


Special collections

Among the library's special collections are the personal papers of hundreds of outstanding Jewish figures, the National Sound Archives, the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The Sidney Edelstein Collection (for the history of science) and numerous other collections of Hebraica and Judaica. The library also possesses some of
Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...
's manuscripts dealing with theological subjects. The collection, donated by the family of the collector Abraham Yahuda, includes many works by Newton about mysticism, analyses of holy books, predictions about the end of days and the appearance of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. It also contains maps that Newton sketched about mythical events to assist him in his end of days calculations. The library houses the personal archives of Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem. Additionally the library houses the Gershom Scholem Collection for the Research of Kabbalah and Hasidism, including Scholem's personal library and items added since his death in 1982. Following the occupation of
West Jerusalem West Jerusalem or Western Jerusalem (, ; , ) refers to the section of Jerusalem that was controlled by Israel at the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. As the city was divided by the Green Line (Israel's erstwhile border, established by ...
by Haganah forces in May 1948, the libraries of a number Palestinians who fled the country as well as of other well-to-do Palestinians were transferred to the National Library.The Looting of the Palestinian Books
Mitaam: a Review for radical thought 8 (December 2006), pp. 12–22, by Gish Amit
These collections included those of Henry Cattan, Khalil Beidas, Khalil al-Sakakini and Aref Hikmet Nashashibi. About 30,000 books were removed from homes in West Jerusalem, with another 40,000 taken from other cities in Mandatory Palestine. It is unclear whether the books were being kept and protected or if they were looted from the abandoned houses of their owners. About 6,000 of these books are in the library today indexed with the label AP – "Abandoned Property". The books are cataloged, can be viewed from the Library's general catalog and are regularly consulted by the public. The National Library of Israel completed its collection of the Max Brod archive in August 2019. Indeed, the Israel Supreme Court in a highly controversial decision ordered the papers including the Franz Kafka papers to be deposited here although Max Brod had expressly left the ultimate decision to the daughters of his secretary and heir Ester Hoffe providing that they were to hand them over to the "Bibliothek der Hebräischen Universität Jerusalem oder der Städtischen Bibliothek Tel Aviv oder einem anderen öffentlichen Archiv im Inland oder Ausland" ibrary of the Hebrew university Jerusalem or the City Library Tel Aviv or another domestic or foreign public archive On 19 December 2022, Irishman Stuart Rosenblatt, President of the Genealogical Society of Ireland, donated his 22 volume collection, being the ''Genealogical History of the Irish Jewish Communities'', to the National Library of Israel, in the presence of the Irish Ambassador to Israel.Grapevine 11 December 2022: Beyond Blarney
", by Greer Fay Cashman, in ''The Jerusalem Post'', 11 December 2022.


See also

* Judaica Archival Project * List of national and state libraries *
Union List of Israel The Union List of Israel (ULI), or Israel Union Catalog, is a public online union catalog in Israel containing over eight million bibliographic records based on the catalogs of the major research libraries in Israel - including all university lib ...
, combined library catalog with over 5 million entries


References


External links

* * {{Authority control 1892 establishments in Ottoman Syria Academic libraries in Israel Archives in Israel Deposit libraries Government buildings in Israel Hebrew University of Jerusalem Libraries established in 1892 Libraries in Jerusalem
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
Organizations based in Jerusalem Public libraries World Digital Library partners