Fan­ny Gold­stein immi­grat­ed to Amer­i­ca from Rus­sia when she was six. She loved the fact that in her new coun­try, she could bor­row books for free and take part in all kinds of activ­i­ties at the Sat­ur­day Evening Girls Club. Right away, her curios­i­ty attract­ed the notice of the club’s founder, who was also the head of the Boston Pub­lic Library. It wasn’t long before Fan­ny was hired as the librarian’s assis­tant, and then at thir­ty-three, as the first Jew­ish direc­tor of a Boston branch library. And when Fan­ny noticed how rarely Jew­ish fam­i­lies checked out books about their own his­to­ry, she had an idea that would influ­ence libraries and read­ers for decades to come: She decid­ed to host a week-long par­ty to cel­e­brate Jew­ish books and cul­ture. It was such a suc­cess that it launched a nation­al event which has con­tin­ued for 100 years!