One hun­dred years ago, the head librar­i­an of the Boston Pub­lic Library’s West End Branch — a young Russ­ian immi­grant named Fan­ny Gold­stein — found­ed Jew­ish Book Week. In time, Jew­ish Book Week became Jew­ish Book Month, orga­nized by Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. The 2026 issue of Paper Brigade pays trib­ute to the woman behind JBC with this con­ver­sa­tion with the present-day Head of Col­lec­tions of the Nation­al Library of Israel.

The Nation­al Library of Israel is old­er than the State of Israel, but the beau­ti­ful build­ing hous­ing its vast and grow­ing col­lec­tion opened just two years ago, short­ly after the cat­a­stroph­ic Octo­ber 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. In the fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion, Raquel Uke­les, the library’s Head of Col­lec­tions, dis­cuss­es the mak­ing of the 2024 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award – win­ning book 101 Trea­sures of the Nation­al Library of Israel; the library’s his­to­ry, mis­sion, and impor­tance to its diverse patrons; and the ambi­tious, ongo­ing project the insti­tu­tion took on just days after the library build­ing opened. Titled ​“Bear­ing Wit­ness,” this project aims to com­pile all avail­able oral, dig­i­tal, and writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny about Octo­ber 7th.

Car­ol Kauf­man: When I toured the new build­ing recent­ly, it struck me that it must have been extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to choose a rel­a­tive hand­ful of exam­ples to rep­re­sent the library’s trove of mil­lions of books, doc­u­ments, rare man­u­scripts, archives, musi­cal scores, ancient maps, arti­facts, and more. Can you describe the process? How many peo­ple con­tributed to 101 Trea­sures from the Nation­al Library of Israel?

Raquel Uke­les: It was quite a chal­lenge. The library has five main col­lec­tions: Judaica, Israel, Islam and the Mid­dle East, the Gen­er­al Human­i­ties, and Israeli and Jew­ish Music. The cura­tors of those col­lec­tions and I began our jour­ney with a day-long retreat to brain­storm about the items we want­ed to highlight. 

We asked our­selves, ​“What sto­ry do we want to tell peo­ple about the Nation­al Library of Israel?’ We imme­di­ate­ly decid­ed that we did­n’t want to pro­duce a cat­a­log and we couldn’t tell just one sto­ry. It would have to be a set of great sto­ries — about the writ­ers, copy­ists, own­ers, and illus­tra­tors of these texts. 

We end­ed that day with a list of over three hun­dred items. Some are price­less trea­sures, but oth­ers are items on the periph­ery — those that allow us to tell sto­ries about less­er-known fig­ures and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties (such as the Samar­i­tans here and mod­ern Karaites in Egypt). And we want­ed to make sure we cov­ered dif­fer­ent times and places, and all of the library’s formats. 

We decid­ed to orga­nize the book the­mat­i­cal­ly, with the themes designed to elic­it curios­i­ty; some of them are tra­di­tion­al library sub­jects, while oth­ers are more whim­si­cal or sur­pris­ing, such as tech­nol­o­gy, friend­ship, and text and pow­er. Using this frame­work, we suc­ceed­ed in whit­tling down the list to about one hun­dred items. 

The book was writ­ten pri­mar­i­ly by the col­lec­tion cura­tors. Over forty oth­er col­leagues (past and present) also con­tributed — we have more than fifty staff peo­ple at the NLI with PhDs. At a cer­tain point, we real­ized we’d acci­den­tal­ly writ­ten too many essays — 102 — so I cut one of my own. I’m still sor­ry about it, but retroac­tive­ly I fell in love with the num­ber 101, because it goes beyond the round num­ber 100 and hints that there is so much more. 

CK: What are the mis­sions and val­ues embod­ied in the library, and how are they reflect­ed in the book? 

RU: We are the insti­tu­tion for the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of Israel and for the Jew­ish peo­ple world­wide. We also have a man­date of being the pre­mier research insti­tu­tion for the human­i­ties in Israel. 

Our objec­tive for the Judaica, Israel, and Music col­lec­tions is to devel­op them into the most exten­sive and sig­nif­i­cant resources of their kind, ensur­ing their val­ue for both cur­rent and future gen­er­a­tions. For the Islam and Human­i­ties col­lec­tions, our goal is to build world-class resources that effec­tive­ly sup­port con­tem­po­rary researchers. 

That is, our col­lec­tions invite local, region­al, and glob­al inquiries. 101 Trea­sures is a trib­ute to our vision of the library as a kind of lab­o­ra­to­ry, a place of end­less poten­tial that occurs when you put researchers togeth­er with rare man­u­scripts, maps, posters, and even dig­i­tal mate­r­i­al. A library is the encounter between peo­ple and mate­r­i­al, and the ideas that emerge. 

CK: Can you talk a bit about the library’s history? 

RU: This insti­tu­tion is 133 years old, old­er than the State of Israel, and five years old­er than the First Zion­ist Con­gress. One of our ​“found­ing fathers” is Dr. Joseph Chasanowich, a physi­cian and bib­lio­phile from Bia­lystok, Poland. He began col­lect­ing books and rare texts, and some­times accept­ed books in lieu of pay­ment for his med­ical ser­vices. His dream of a Jew­ish nation­al library mate­ri­al­ized in 1892, and he even­tu­al­ly donat­ed about 30,000 vol­umes to the Midrash Abar­banel Library, the first pub­lic library in Jerusalem. 

In 1905, the Sev­enth Zion­ist Con­gress rec­og­nized the library as the offi­cial Jew­ish nation­al library, and in 1920, the World Zion­ist Orga­ni­za­tion appoint­ed the first pro­fes­sion­al direc­tor, Samuel Hugo Bergmann. Under Bergmann’s lead­er­ship, the library expand­ed its col­lec­tions and made impor­tant acqui­si­tions such as Ignaz Goldziher’s Islam­ic stud­ies library, which formed the basis of the library’s Islam and Mid­dle East col­lec­tion, for which I served as cura­tor for ten years. 

The library’s his­to­ry is tight­ly inter­twined with Israel’s. As anti­semitism surged in Europe in the years lead­ing up to World War II, Jew­ish refugees brought valu­able archives to the library. After the war end­ed, the library worked on res­cu­ing Jew­ish books loot­ed by the Nazis and brought tens of thou­sands of vol­umes to Jerusalem. Dur­ing the 1948 War of Inde­pen­dence, the library’s loca­tion on Mount Sco­pus became inac­ces­si­ble, forc­ing the librar­i­ans to relo­cate parts of the col­lec­tion to ten dif­fer­ent places in West Jerusalem. The col­lec­tions were final­ly reunit­ed in 1960 when the library moved to a new build­ing at the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus. 

Stay­ing ahead on the tech­no­log­i­cal front has always been crit­i­cal to our mis­sion. For exam­ple, as ear­ly as 1952, Israel’s first prime min­is­ter, David Ben-Guri­on, ini­ti­at­ed a project to copy all known Jew­ish man­u­scripts world­wide, which became the Insti­tute for Hebrew Micro­filmed Man­u­scripts and is now the online Ktiv Dig­i­tal Library. 

Since 2007, when the Nation­al Library Law was passed, the library was trans­formed from an aca­d­e­m­ic library to a pub­lic insti­tu­tion that pro­motes research, learn­ing, and cul­tur­al engagement.

CK: The new build­ing was slat­ed to open ten days after Hamas’s dev­as­tat­ing attack on Israel. The open­ing cer­e­monies as well as the book launch for 101 Trea­sures were can­celled, of course. What was it like for you and the staff at that time?

RU: Octo­ber 7th was a cat­a­stroph­ic event for every­one in Israel. It affect­ed the library in sev­er­al ways — first because we were set to open the new build­ing on Octo­ber 17, 2023. On Octo­ber 7th, which was Simhat Torah and Shab­bat, I was in syn­a­gogue. Amaz­ing­ly, dur­ing the air raids on Jerusalem, our CEO and brave col­leagues from the con­ser­va­tion depart­ment rushed to the library and brought all of the pre­cious orig­i­nal items from the exhi­bi­tion hall — spaces that had been planned so care­ful­ly for weeks, months, and years — down to safe­ty in the under­ground vaults. 

The next day we offi­cial­ly can­celed all of the open­ing cer­e­monies and braced for war. The ques­tion then was, what is the role of this cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion in a time of cri­sis? The answer was that our role as the Nation­al Library is to be avail­able for the peo­ple. We opened the read­ing halls three weeks lat­er, on Octo­ber 29th, and they’ve been packed ever since. I think peo­ple are drawn to the library’s archi­tec­tur­al beau­ty, invit­ing pub­lic spaces, and the calm, qui­et read­ing rooms. We are thrilled that the library con­tin­ues to be a place where all mem­bers of Israeli soci­ety find them­selves and can be found. 

CK: Can you dis­cuss the painful, impor­tant work the library took on imme­di­ate­ly after Octo­ber 7th?

RU: Over the past year and a half, the library has spear­head­ed an unprece­dent­ed ini­tia­tive, ​“Bear­ing Wit­ness,” to devel­op a com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als chron­i­cling the events of Octo­ber 7th and the peri­od that fol­lowed, both in Israel and glob­al­ly. The goals are to estab­lish a defin­i­tive his­tor­i­cal account of this piv­otal era in Israeli and Jew­ish his­to­ry and to cre­ate a state-of-the-art archive that will be an essen­tial resource for us now and for the gen­er­a­tions to come.

We start­ed to col­lect mate­r­i­al on Octo­ber 9th, first down­load­ing web­sites and social media and then expand­ing to col­lect oral tes­ti­monies, writ­ten nar­ra­tives, What­sApp mes­sages, video and audio record­ings, pho­tographs, and a wide array of reli­gious, cul­tur­al, and polit­i­cal expres­sions. This work has chal­lenged us to devel­op new meth­ods — real-time col­lect­ing runs counter to how libraries usu­al­ly work. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, libraries take a long view when col­lect­ing and decid­ing on what’s impor­tant to pre­serve. But there was no time because if you didn’t catch some­thing while it was online, and it got tak­en down, it was gone. For exam­ple, we saw videos post­ed by Hamas that were removed hours lat­er. So Octo­ber 7th has spurred us to work in new ways. We’re also col­lab­o­rat­ing with over a hun­dred oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion ini­tia­tives. We’ve formed part­ner­ships with grass­roots ini­tia­tives and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions in Israel and abroad. 

Look­ing ahead, our empha­sis will shift toward estab­lish­ing a uni­fied archive with shared stan­dards that will enable researchers and the pub­lic to work with a sin­gle col­lec­tion. We remain active­ly engaged in col­lect­ing mate­ri­als, and any­one inter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing can do so through the library’s website.

CK: What was the hard­est part?

RU: The hard­est part has been the nature of the mate­r­i­al, much of which is ter­ri­ble to see. Anoth­er issue is vol­ume — the vast amounts of mate­ri­als that must be stored before cat­a­loging. To address both chal­lenges, we’re devel­op­ing AI-based tools that will help to review the most graph­ic mate­ri­als and orga­nize the enor­mous amounts of mate­ri­als collected. 

CK: What are the impli­ca­tions of col­lect­ing liv­ing his­to­ry, much of it from elec­tron­ic media, for schol­ar­ly research going forward?

RU: The impli­ca­tions are pro­found and mul­ti­fac­eted. On the one hand, this col­lec­tion of pri­ma­ry source mate­r­i­al offers unpar­al­leled oppor­tu­ni­ties for researchers and will enable a rich­er, and more nuanced, under­stand­ing of the events. On the oth­er hand, researchers will need effec­tive search tools in order to nav­i­gate these mas­sive archives. Pre­serv­ing the archives long-term will also require a robust infra­struc­ture and sig­nif­i­cant resources. 

Col­lect­ing sen­si­tive per­son­al data rais­es con­cerns about pri­va­cy. To that end, we have set up a con­sor­tium of the main cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions and doc­u­men­ta­tion ini­tia­tives, which meets reg­u­lar­ly to devel­op an eth­i­cal code for this kind of work going forward. 

In short, this is a huge under­tak­ing that will con­tin­ue for sev­er­al years and cre­ate, as much as pos­si­ble, the most thor­ough his­tor­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion regard­ing the events of Octo­ber 7th and its after­math. And we’re work­ing both with­in Israel and across Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties inter­na­tion­al­ly, because this nar­ra­tive extends beyond Israel. It’s a glob­al story. 

CK: The new build­ing is tru­ly stun­ning. What does its design sym­bol­ize, and how do you think the archi­tec­ture influ­ences the ambi­ence of the library? 

RU: I feel that the build­ing pow­er­ful­ly sym­bol­izes the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of past, present, and future cul­tur­al knowl­edge. The main read­ing halls were con­ceived of as a ​“well of knowl­edge,” three lev­els of amply-laden book­shelves that encir­cle the silent read­ing halls. At the same time, gath­er­ing spaces through­out the build­ing are designed to fos­ter dis­cus­sion — the deeply embed­ded Jew­ish tra­di­tion of learn­ing through dis­course is inte­grat­ed into the very archi­tec­ture. The library has five lev­els of under­ground stacks that are accessed by robot­ic machin­ery. To me, these silent lev­els rep­re­sent a strong foun­da­tion in his­to­ry that sup­ports the upper lev­els, which are alive with activ­i­ty — school field trips, con­certs, lec­tures, tours, and more — and sym­bol­ize our dynam­ic present and future. I love how pop­u­lar we are with teenagers!