Association of Jewish Libraries Publishing

Hass Weinberg, Bella

7 
IN THE BEGINNING 
Negative Attitudes to Judaica Reference Works 
Bella Hass Weinberg, Editor 
Reference work is a major function of li-
brarianship, and reference books are its pri-
mary tools. RecentlY, I have encountered some 
negative attitudes to Judaica reference works, 
which leads to the intriguing question: Are Ju-
daism and reference librarianship antithetical? 
The purpose of this editorial is to present the 
issues; response from readers is invited. 
Quick reference, i.e., the provision of answers 
to specific questions, is an important library 
service, and well indexed reference works are 
the key to the provision of this service. 
In the world of Jewish scholarship, I have en-
countered the same negative attitude to in-
dexes that one sometimes meets in the general 
world, i.e., that indexes discourage reading. I 
once recall recommending to a European edi-
tor of a Judaica bibliography that she comple-
ment her classification scheme with a detailed 
alphabetic subject index. She responded that 
she expected scholars to sit and study the 
classification scheme, not to simply look up 
the desired topic in the index. 
Certain rabbis have expressed negative opin-
ions on indexes to halakhic codes that may 
allow the layman to decide questions of Jew-
ish law himself. Negative attitudes to the cod-
ification of Jewish law, and even to recording 
oral law, have a long tradition. The rationale for 
the compilation of the Mishnah and Talmud 
was yeridat hadorot-the decline of the gen-
erations. Maimonides' code, Mishneh Torah 
was highly controversial in his day because he 
failed to cite the original sources. Max 
Weinreich, in his History of the Yiddish Lan-
guage (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980), dis-
cusses the principle of "vertical legitima-
tion"-supporting a legal decision by 
referring to an earlier source. 
A cogent rationale for studying the original 
sources, rather than codes, is provided by 
Joseph M. Baumgarten in his review of David 
Weiss Halivni's Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: 
The history of the codification of Jewish 
law may be viewed as following a systolic 
pattern. Each attempt to contract the ever 
widening elaborations of the Halakhah in 
the form of a summation is invariably fol-
lowed by a phase of dilation, in which the 
earlier decisions are again scrutinized, jus-
tified, and interpreted in a discursive and 
often innovative manner. 
(Jewish Quarterly Revie~ vol. LXXVII no. 1 
(July 1986), p. 59) 
Reference librarians are concerned with the 
correctness of answers, and operate on the 
assumption that there is a single correct an-
swer to a question. It has been pointed out 
that a good posek (decider of Jewish law) 
will not publicly announce the answer to a 
question such as "Is X's butcher shop kosher?" 
or "Is it permissible to check off on a driver's 
license that one is willing to donate one's 
· organs in case of a car accident?" The layman 
expects a yes/no response to such questions, 
but a rabbi will take personal factors into ac-
count in making his decision, and may give a 
different response to different questioners 
posing the same question. 
Cutter and Oppenheim, in their columns on 
Judaica reference works which reviewed the 
Hebrew and English editions of the indexes to 
the responsa of the late posek Rabbi Moshe 
Feinstein, quoted the disclaimer from the pref-
ace that the indexes were not to be used to 
decide questions of Jewish law (see entry no. 
18 in their column in this issue). 
In this age of "do-it-yourselfism," it seems log-
ical to check a compilation such as Shemirat 
Shabat Ke-Hilkhatah to answer a question 
such as "May one use an egg slicer on the Sab-
bath?" One might even argue that the exis-
tence of a well indexed code in English 
furthers the observance of Judaism in that 
people who may be reluctant or embarrassed 
to ask a rabbi what they consider a trivial or 
stupid question, can look it up themselves. 
Reference librarians are well aware of the diffi-
culty of eliciting the real information needs of 
many users. 
In the general library world, reference li-
brarians are also acutely aware of the dangers 
of making legal codes and medical texts avail-
able to laymen. If they include such books in 
the collection, librarians are warned not to in-
terpret them or dispense advice. PresumablY, 
Judaica librarians are not functioning as 
poskim. 
Digests-Eliezer Wise, in his article in this 
issue, notes criticism of the "fast-vort 
industry"-the publication of digests of com-
mentaries on classic Jewish texts. I, too, have 
encountered negative attitudes to this genre 
from rabbis who argue that such digests de-
tract from 'amalah she! Torah-the labor in-
volved in mastering primary Jewish texts. 
(English teachers have a similar attitude, 
/ehavdil, to summaries of literary classics, but 
librarians make such tools available.) 
In the historical literature of indexing, one 
finds that the first indexer of the [Christian] 
Bible was burned at the stake because he de-
tracted from the position of the priests, whose 
specialized knowledge of the Bible had sud-
denly become available to laymen as a result 
of the publication of such a reference work. In 
Judaism, in contrast, rabbis would like laymen 
to' know the original text, and Biblical con-
cordances are viewed positively. 
Translations-Negative attitudes to transla-
tions of Jewish classical texts date back to the 
Septuagint or Targum ha-shiv'im. RecentlY, crit-
icism similar to that leveled at digests has 
been directed at the new English translation 
and commentary on the Talmud compiled by 
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. I was privileged to at-
tend a press breakfast held in honor of the 
publication of the first volume of the transla-
tion by Random House. I asked Rabbi Stein-
saltz how he responds to the criticism relating 
to 'amalah she/ Torah, and he answered that he 
rejects this attitude. Just as printing is a tech-
nical improvement over handwritin•g that facil-
itates study of texts, said Rabbi Steinsaltz, so 
removing the language barrier makes the Tal-
mud accessible to a greater number of peo-
ple. 
Also rejecting the 'amalah she/ Torah 
argument, a Lubavitch Rabbi (Yisrael Rice of 
Marin CountY, CA) shared with me the story of 
the Tsemaf} Tsedek, who as a child was of-
fered a gift of Torah knowledge by the alter 
Rebbe. The Tsemaf} Tsedek refused the gift 
because he felt he should acquire this knowl-
edge through his own hard work. Later in life, 
however, he regretted not having accepted 
the gift, because he could have gone on to a 
higher level of learning had he already pos-
sessed the knowledge that was offered to him 
(Likute Sif}ot, Part 24, p. 561 ). The current 
Lubavitcher Rebbe is a great supporter of ref-
erence works as aids to the acquisition of 
knowledge; evidence for this is found in the 
numerous indexes and encyclopedias listed 
in the catalog of Kehot Publications, the 
Lubavitch imprint. 
As is the case with so many issues in Judaism, 
there is no unanimity on the question of 
whether codes, digests, translations, and in-
dexes advance or detract from Jewish learn-
ing. 
Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 3 
l 
I 
! 


English

Negative Attitudes to Judaica Reference Works

Greenbaum, Avraham

Some Recent Holocaust Bibliographies: A Review 
Avraham Greenbaum 
Introduction 
The explosion of Holocaust literature in re-
cent decades has naturally led to a need 
for bibliographies of the topic. What follows 
is a description of several among a grow-
ing number of Holocaust bibliographies to 
have appeared since the mid-1980s. 
KRANZLER (Continued from p. 29) 
usually consists of a series of articles writ-
ten in a relatively popular style that clarify 
a broad range of topics for the layman. 
That is not the style of these scholarly es-
says. Nor is the book really "an analytical 
guide to topics or sources," except in a 
very limited way. In fact, the only themes 
that are readily accessible to the reader 
(and librarian) are those reflected in the 
titles of the eighteen chapters. One would 
have hoped for a guide to the myriad spe-
cific issues covered so well by the essays, 
such as identity, alienation, Yiddishkeit 
(and its various definitions), and dual loy-
alty. Such a tool could have been provided 
through a good analytical subject index. 
Perhaps in a second edition, which this 
work certainly deserves, the publishers will 
see fit to add such an index and rectify 
some of the above-mentioned lacunae, 
thus providing a more useful reference 
tool. 
Until then, one can enjoy the otherwise 
outstanding essays, thereby gaining a 
great deal of knowledge, along with new 
insights and perspectives on American 
Jewish literature. Thus, despite minor res-
ervations, this book is highly recom-
mended to both the librarian and the 
researcher in any field of twentieth-century 
Judaic Studies. 
Dr. David Kranzler has recently retired from 
Queensborough Community College 
(CUNY) where he was professor, chief of 
the Social Science library, and director of 
its Holocaust Archives. He is the author 
of five books and many articles on the 
Holocaust, including the now classic, 
Japanese, Nazis and Jews: the Jewish 
Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938-
1945 (Yeshiva U. Press, 1976, reprinted by 
Ktav 1988). He is currently completing a 
manuscript on American Jewry and the 
Holocaust. 
University of Haifa 
Haifa, Israel 
We should start by noting that Holocaust 
bibliographies list not only books and arti-
cles (most of them only books), but also 
memorial sites, program resources, orga-
nizations, and literature related to the 
Holocaust. The last-named category is 
flexible and may, depending on the com-
piler or sponsor, include histories of the 
Jews, discussions of modern antisemitism, 
the Armenian holocaust, and other items 
tangential to the main topic. "Holocaust de~ 
nial" literature, normally a product of neo-
Nazism, poses a special problem, but it 
tends to be included as a distasteful sub-
ject which is nevertheless of legitimate in-
terest. We are reminded of the decision by 
the Jewish Encyclopedia at the beginning 
of the century to give entries to prominent 
antisemites; this practice has been adopted 
by serious Jewish encyclopedias ever 
since. 
Reviews 
Cargas, Harry James. The Holocaust: An 
Annotated Bibliography. 2nd ed. Chicago: 
American Library Association, 1985. 196 p. 
By a "Holocaust-obsessed Catholic," as 
the author describes himself. Lists about 
500 English-language books, selected for 
university libraries and large public library 
and high school collections. Copiously an-
notated. Indexed by place, concentration 
camp, and title. In terms of organization 
and relevance of material, an outstanding 
work. Cargas has apparently read many of 
the selected books himself. 
Edelheit, Abraham J.; Edelheit, Hershel. 
Bibliography on Holocaust Literature. 
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986. 842 p. 
Though a poor piece of bookmaking-re-
produced from typescript, crowded, and 
lacking running heads-this is by far the 
most extensive of recent Holocaust bib-
liographies, with over 9,000 books and 
articles in English. Includes historical 
background, some articles in popular mag-
azines, and much material from the Holo-
caust period itself. One of the many 
subsections is devoted to "revisionist" liter-
ature. The Edelheits have produced a fairly 
closely classified list, indexed by author 
only. An index by place is sorely missed. 
The Holocaust in Books and Films: A 
Selected Annotated List. 3rd ed. New York: 
Hippocrene Books, 1986. 158 p. 
30 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 
English-language only. Aimed at librarians 
and teachers. About 475 entries. Sponsor 
is the International Center of B'nai B'rith's 
Anti-Defamation League. All entries are ei-
ther annotated or, if collective works, have 
contents displayed. Well done, though in 
this reviewer's opinion, the controversial 
aspect of Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of 
the European Jews, should have been 
noted under the entry for that work. 
The bibliography includes some directory 
information and a small section called 
"analogies," which lists books on the Ar-
menian holocaust and other comparable 
events. 
Laska, Vera. Nazism, Resistance, and 
Holocaust in World War II: A Bibliography. 
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1985. 
182 p. 
By a survivor of Auschwitz, who does her 
best to provide a scholarly bibliography. 
The book includes 1,907 entries, mostly in 
English, with occasional, brief annotations; 
the general lack of annotations sometimes 
makes it read too much like a library sub-
ject catalog. Index by author only causes a 
problem; as a minimum, an index by con-
centration camps and cities should have 
been provided. Especially useful are the 
subsections on pre-1945 knowledge of the 
extermination program and on women in 
the Holocaust-the latter a subject on 
which the author is an expert. 
Sable, Martin H. Holocaust Studies: A Di-
rectory and Bibliography of Bibliographies. 
Greenwood, FL: The Penkeville Publishing 
Co.,© 1987. 115 p. 
Since an extensive bibliography of Holo-
caust bibliographies is hardly necessary 
as yet, this section of the work is small-
and insufficiently annotated at that. An un-
usual feature is the inclusion of Hebrew 
and Yiddish bibliographies, although no at-
tempt is made to arrive at a scholarly 
transliteration of titles. This work is mainly 
useful as a directory, not only of organiza-
tions (including "Holocaust deniers"), but 
also of memorial sites. The geographic 
breakdown causes a jarring note to be 
struck when all one finds under "Virginia" is 
the American Nazi Party! The indexing of 
this reference work is good. 
Dr. Avraham Greenbaum, now retired from 
the Haifa University Library, is currently as-
sociated with the Dinur Institute for Re-
search in Jewish History, Hebrew University, 
Jerusalem. 
, 
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Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 31 
l 


Some recent Holocaust Bibliographies: a review

Sydney Taylor Book Awards Committee

Jewish Children's Books Too Good To Miss: 
Selected List of 1988 Titles 
Association of Jewish Libraries, Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee 
I. Picture books and young readers 
(K-3) 
Bayar, Steven and Ilene. Rachel and Mischa. 
Kar-Ben. 
This photo-essay contrasts the lives of two Jew-
ish children, one American and one Russian, 
and how they practice their religion. 
Carmi, Giora. And Shira Imagined. Jewish Pub-
lication Society. 
Dramatic pictures from young Shira's imagina-
tion interpret the actual places that Shira and 
her family visit in Israel. 
Cohen, Barbara. The Donkey's Story: A Bible 
Story. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. 
This humorous retelling of the Bible tale in which 
the prophet Balaam is asked to curse the Jewish 
people emphasizes the wise donkey's point of 
view. 
*Ganz, Yaffa. From Head to Toe: A Book about 
You. Philip •Feldheim. 
This book about the body explains each system 
in clear and simple terms, and then discusses 
each within the framework of Jewish values, ob-
servances, and relationship to God. 
*Geisert, Arthur. The Ark. Houghton Mifflin. 
In sepia-toned drawings that are as detailed as 
blueprints, the author/illustrator shows the suc-
cession of events in the familiar Bible story of 
Noah. 
Gellman, Ellie. Justin's Hebrew Name. Kar-Ben. 
Justin begins Hebrew school without a Hebrew 
name. With the help of his classmates and an 
understanding rabbi, Justin acquires a name 
that is just right for him. 
Goldin, Barbara Diamond. Just Enough Is 
Plenty: A Hanukkah Tale. Viking-Kestrel. 
Although money is scarce this Hanukkah time, 
the generous family welcomes the mysterious 
peddler who leaves behind gifts and clues to his 
real identity. 
**Polacco, Patricia. The Keeping Quilt. Simon & 
Schuster. 
A handmade remembering quilt follows several 
generations of a Jewish family through life-cycle 
events, providing continuity of tradition from 
generation to generation. 
*Zalben, Jane Breskin. Beni's First Chanukah. 
Henry Holt. 
Beni, a young bear, helps his mother make 
latkes, plays dreidel, recites Hanukkah prayers 
with his father, and shares the holiday with the 
neighboring animals. 
II. Books for middle readers (grades 
3-6) 
Burstein, Chaya. A Kid's Catalog of Israel. 
Jewish Publication Society. 
This mini-encyclopedia about Israel contains 
geography, history, stories, recipes, projects, 
songs, vocabulary, and lots more. 
Burstein, Chaya. The Mystery of the Coins. 
Union of American Hebrew Congregations. 
Two children and their grandmother discover 
some old coins which lead them through a study 
of Jewish history fro[ll ancient times to today. 
Chaikin. Miriam. Friends Forever. Harper & Row. 
Set against the background of World War II, this 
latest in the stories of Molly and her friends 
focuses on Molly's school experiences and her 
struggles to grow up. 
Cytron, Barry. Fire! The Library is Burning. 
Lerner. 
This well organized book brings to life the disas-
trous fire and the rescue of thousands of books 
burned at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 
1966. 
Elias, Miriam. And Then There Were Four. Philip 
Feldheim. 
Four girls, all students at a girls' Jewish day 
school, share laughter and tears, friendship and 
fears as they become fast friends. 
*Greene, Jacqueline Dembar. Out of Many Wa-
ters. Walker. 
Isobel, daughter of Portuguese converses, and 
her sister are kidnapped by the Inquisition and 
taken to Brazil. They escape, and Isobel finds 
safety in the company of the group of Jews who 
become the first Jewish settlers in New Amster-
dam. 
Hurwitz, Johanna. Anne Frank: Life in Hiding. 
Jewish Publication Society. 
This is a simple, straightforward retelling of the 
Anne Frank story, with a chronology and an in-
dex. 
*Provost, Gary and Gail. David and Max. Jewish 
Publication Society. 
Twelve-year-old David discovers the secret of 
his Holocaust survivor grandfather when they 
share a summer at Plum Island. 
**Yolen, Jane. The Devil's Arithmetic. Viking 
Kestrel. 
Hannah, aged twelve, bored by the repetition of 
the Passover seder, is transported back to the 
Polish town where her family originated and be-
comes Chaya, a victim of the Nazis. 
Ill. Young adults (grades 7-12) 
Brownstone, David M. The Jewish American 
Heritage. Facts on File. 
A large number of period photographs and 
quotations enhance this basic overview of Jew-
ish immigration to the United States. 
1
Lefer, Diane. Emma Lazarus. Chelsea House. 
In this clear, well-organized biography, both his-
tory and biography are entwined to give a com-
plete picture of Emma Lazarus and her times. 
*Meltzer, Milton. Rescue: the Story of How Gen-
tiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust. Harper & 
Row. 
First-hand sources chronicle the stories of non-
Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during 
the Holocaust. 
Rogasky, Barbara. Smoke and Ashes: the Story 
of the Holocaust. Holiday. 
This well organized, methodical, and com-
prehensive study of the Holocaust is enhanced 
by numerous thoughtfully chosen photographs. 
Roth-Hano, Renee. Touch Wood: A Girlhood in 
Occupied France. Four Winds. 
This autobiographical novel tells the story of 
how a family of Jewish girls survives the war in 
Occupied France by being sheltered in a Cath-
olic women's residence. 
*Honor Book 
**Sydney Taylor Award Book 
Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 49 
7 
r 
! 


Jewish Children's Books Too Good To Miss: Selected List of 1988 Titles

Lifton, Rita

r 
I 
SERIALLY SPEAKING 
This column features brief notices of new 
Judaic and Hebraic journals. Contributions 
from readers and publishers are welcome. 
Write the author at: 
Technical Services Center 
Library of the Jewish Theological 
Seminary of America 
3080 Broadway 
New York, NY 1 0027 
Babylon: Beitrage zur Jiidischen 
Gegenwart. Heft 1- 1986- Editors: 
Dan Diner, Susan Heenen-Wolff, Gertrud 
Koch, Gilly Kugelmann, Martin Low-Beer. 
Verlag Neue Kritik, Kettenhofweg 53, 6000 
Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany. 
Semi-annual. $10.95. ISBN 3-8015-0211-2. 
A semi-annual, in German, that examines 
recent Jewish history and the contempo-
rary Jewish scene. The first issue includes 
articles, some in translation, about such 
wide-ranging topics as: Germans and 
Jews after Auschwitz; the status of Amer-
ican Jewish intellectuals; notes on the film 
"Shoah"; and an interview with Marek 
Edelman. In addition, there are several 
pages of book reviews. 
Bat Kol: Hadassah Jewish Education 
Guide. no. 1- 1987- Editor: Carol 
Diament. Hadassah, 50 West 58th Street, 
New York, New York 10019. Annual. 
$3.00. 
Hadassah's renewed education guide, this 
magazine is aimed at Hadassah members, 
who are instructed to utilize the material for 
"board and general meetings, study 
groups, kallot and education days. 'Juda-
ism and the Jewish Woman' is the theme 
for this initial issue." The magazine is di-
vided into three parts: (1) articles treating 
various aspects of the issue's featured 
theme, with each article followed by pro-
gram suggestions; (2) sample formats for 
study groups about the theme; (3) a de-
scription of how to give a book review, con-
cluding with a number of brief reviews. 
Jewish Combatants of World War Two: 
an Independent Illustrated Semi-annual 
Magazine. [New series] v. 1, no. 1- Fall/ 
Winter 1987- Editor: Isaac Kowalski. 
Rita Lifton 
Jewish Theological Seminary of America 
New York, NY 
Jewish Combatants Publishing House, 
P.O.B. 360323, Brooklyn, New York 11236-
0007. Semi-annual. $10.00. 
Four issues of this magazine appeared in 
_ 1980-1981 . The aim of the renewed pub-
lication is "to portray the Jewish fighting 
men and women who took part in World 
War Two." Articles from the first issue in-
clude: "On the Position of the Jewish Par-
tisan in the Soviet Partisan Movement," by 
Abraham Zvie Brown; "Polish Jews in the 
Forests and the Parachutists," by Shlomo 
Strauss-Marko; and "Flames in the 
Ashes," a movie review by Marsha Leon. 
Book reviews and obituaries are included 
in each issue. 
Jewish Studies Network. v. 1 , no. 1-
Spring 1987- Editor: Sid Leiman; as 
of v. 1, no. 2, Mel Scult. Department of Ju-
daic Studies, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, 
New York 11210. Semi-annual. Free. 
A newsletter, cosponsored by the Jewish 
Education Coalition on Higher Education 
and the City University of New York, which 
includes information about programs, lec-
tures, publications, and appointments in 
Jewish studies on campuses in New York 
City. Each issue includes a column de-
voted to "Faculty News and Special Pro-
grams," and one or two scholarly articles. 
Menorah: Australian Journal of Jewish 
Studies. v. 1, issue 1- August 
1987- Editor: Evan M. Zuesse. Aus-
tralian Association for Jewish Studies, c/o 
Dr. W. D. Rubinstein, School of the Social 
Sciences, Deakin University, Waurn 
Ponds, Victoria 3217, Australia. Semi-
annual. $35.00 (U.S.). ISSN 0819-9957. 
Reflecting the "renaissance of Jewish 
cultural life in Australia," this journal "is de-
voted to the study of Jewish culture in all its 
aspects and in all periods," with particular 
emphasis on the Australian Jewish experi-
ence. The premier issue consists mainly of 
papers presented at the 1986 conference 
of the Australian Association for the Study 
of Religion. Jewish identity is the focus of 
several articles: "The Phoenix People: 
Jewish Identity in the Modern World," by 
Evan M. Zuesse; "Identity and Religious 
Identification of Children of Holocaust Sur-
vivors," by Leon Mann; and a prescient 
pie,ce by Alan D. Crown, entitled "Once 
Again: Who is a Jew?-And Some Conse-
quences for KlalYisrael." Included in each 
issue is a literary section offering "poetry 
and fiction dealing with Jewish themes." 
Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testa-
ment. 1- 1987- Editors: Knud 
Jeppesen, Niels Peter Lemche. Aarhus 
University Press, University of Aarhus, 
N0rrebrogade, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Den-
mark. Semi-annual. $31.00. ISSN 
0901-8328. 
The purpose of SJOT is to give "scholars 
who are brought up speaking a group of 
languages which are not universally under-
stood a better chance to address the rest 
of the Old Testament World." With that in 
mind, a good portion of every issue is 
given over to Scandinavian scholars of the 
Old Testament. Contributions are in En-
glish, German, and various Scandinavian 
languages, with abstracts at the end of the 
issue. Some articles from the first two is-
sues: "The Transition From the Bronze 
Age to the Iron Age in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean and the Emergence of the Israelite 
State," by John Strange; "The Syriac 
Translation of the Old Testament," by Hen-
ning J. Lehmann; and "Eblaite: An Intro-
duction to the State of Research on the 
Cuneiform Tablets," by K. Arvid Tangberg. 
Trumah: Hochshule fiir Jiidische Stu-
dien. 1 - 1987- Editors: Moshe 
Elat, Martin S. Cohen, Theodore Kwasman. 
Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden, 
Federal Republic of Germany. Annual. 
$53.00. 
A journal, in German, published by the 
Jewish Studies Department of the Univer-
sity of Heidelberg. The first issue deals 
with Biblical studies and European Jewish 
history. Articles cover pre-World War I Ger-
man Zionist societies, the significance of 
history in the works of Franz Rosenzweig, 
and the Jewish community of Rothenburg, 
Bavaria. 
Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 101 
Hebrew and Bilingual Serials 
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1 . Asupot: Annual for Jewish Studies. 
v. 1- 1987/1988- Editor: Meir 
Benayahu. Yad Harav Nissim, 44 Jab-
otinsky Street, Jerusalem, Israel. Annual. 
$25.00. 
A scholarly publication devoted to Jewish 
studies. The initial volume includes arti-
cles about the history of the Hebrew calen-
dar; messianism and astrology in the 
thought of Rabbi Isaac Abravanel; and the 
legal status of the Jews of Livorno in 1593. 
Of particular note is a bibliography de-
scribing 118 Hebrew manuscripts, parts of 
which are found in various collections. 
2. Ga/im: Literary Magazine. Gilayon 
1- 1987/1988- Editors: Ada 
Aharoni, Mordehaj Steinberg. Galim, 
PO.B. 9137, Haifa 31091, Israel. Annual. 
$3.00. 
This annual, published by Agudat Shot,are 
ha-Sifrut f:iefah veha-Tsafon (loosely 
translated: Association for Promotion of 
Literature of Haifa and the North), seeks to 
make modern literature accessible to a 
wider public, and to encourage beginning 
authors and poets by publishing new 
Hebrew poetry and prose. The first issue 
includes an interview with Saul Bellow, an 
essay about the depiction of Arabs and 
Jews in Arab-Israeli literature, and an arti-
cle about the Jewish problem as a theme 
in French novels. Prose, poetry, and 
drama by new authors appear throughout 
the issue. A final section lists activities of 
the Association. 
3. Darchey Eretz: Journal of the World 
Centre for Aleppo Jews Traditional 
Culture. no. 1- September 1986-
Editor: Moshe Cohen. World Center for Al-
eppo Jews Traditional Culture, 118a Ben 
Yehuda Street, Tel-Aviv 63401, Israel. Ir-
regular. $8.00 per issue. 
The World Center for Aleppo Jews Tradi-
tional Culture was established in Israel in 
1985, "to document, to promote and to dis-
seminate" the cultural heritage of Aleppo 
Jewry. Their journal "reflects the many fac-
ets of the Aleppo Jewish community," 
through stories, biographies, photos, leg-
end, and poetry. Each issue includes book 
reviews. 
4. Edut (Testimony). v. 1- June 
1987- Editors: Aryeh Fialkov, Yudke 
Helman. Joint publication of Bet Lo~ame 
ha-Geta'ot and Kibuts ha-Me'uhad Pub-
lishing House, 102 Arlosoroff sfreet, Tel-
Aviv 62097, Israel. Irregular. $5.00 per 
issue . 
This journal continues Yedi'ot, issued by 
Bet Lo~ame ha-Geta'ot (Ghetto Fighters 
House) from 1951 to 1960. "The broaden-
ing of the activities of" Bet Lo~ame ha-
Geta'ot, the expansion of its archives, and 
the establishment of the Zuckerman Study 
Center for Jewish Resistance in Nazi-
Occupied Europe led to the renewal of the· 
journal. The editors see "the deepening of 
an awareness of the Holocaust among the 
young generation" as their mission. The 
lead article of the premier issue is about 
the "Final Solution." The author is Zvi 
Shner, one of the founders of Bet Lohame 
ha-Geta'ot. Much of the rest of the pe-
riodical is devoted to personal narratives 
from the archives of Bet Lohame ha-
Geta'ot. Included also are book and pe-
riodical reviews. 
5. Pesetas: '/ton le-Shirah ule-Meda' 'al 
Sifre Shirah ve-Omanut. Gilayon 1-
December 1987- Editor: ltamar 
Ya'oz-Kest. Eked, 29 Bar-Kokhba, Tel-Aviv 
61111, Israel. Quarterly. $20.00. 
A magazine devoted to poetry. The first is-
sue includes articles about Aba Kovner, an 
interview with Louis Aragon, and an essay 
on poetic sensibility in the thought of Rav 
Kook. New Hebrew poetry is interspersed 
throughout the periodical, which includes a 
section for children's poetry as well as 
book reviews. 
6. Shenaton Estrategi. 1986- Edi-
tor: Yosef Alter. Joint publication of ha-Mer-
kaz le-Me~karim Estrategiyim 'a. sh. Yafeh 
and Kibuts ha-Me'u~ad Publishing House, 
P.O.B. 16040, 39 Hayetzira Street, Ramat 
Gan 52521, Israel. Annual. Price not avail-
able. ISBN 965-02-0023-1. 
Includes articles pertaining to Israel's mili-
tary policy and other issues of strategic in-
terest to Israel. The first volume includes 
pieces about the Lebanon Campaign of 
1982, the sale of Israeli weapons---to other 
countries, and the attitude of the Soviet 
bloc towards terrorist organizations. 
102 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 
Rita Lifton is a cataloger at the Library of 
the Jewish Theological Seminary of Amer-
ica in New York City. 
BAKER (Continued from p. 100) 
Prejudice: Racist-Religious-Nationalist. 
London: Published for The Institute of Con-
temporary History by Vallentine, Mitchell, 
1971. (The Wiener Library; Catalogue Series 
no. 5). 
Robinson, Jacob; assisted by Mrs. Philip Fried-
man. The Holocaust and After: Sources & Lit-
erature in English. Jerusalem: Israel 
Universities Press, 1973. (Yad Vashem Mar-
tyrs' and Heroes' Memorial Authority, 
Jerusalem; YIVO Institute for Jewish Re-
search, New York: Joint Documentary 
Projects, Bibliographical Series; no. 12). 
Schmelzer, Menahem. "Research Services." In: 
Berlin, Charles, ed. Judaica Librarianship: 
Facing the Future; Proceedings of a Con-
ference Held at Harvard University on May 
2-3, 1988 on the Occasion of the Twenty-
Fifth Anniversary of the Judaica Department 
of the Harvard College Library. Cambridge, 
Mass.: Harvard University Library, 1989, pp. 
27-32. Reprinted in: Jud~ica Librarianship 
Vol. 4 No. 2 (Spring 1988-Winter 1989), pp. 
128-130. 
Zachary M. Baker is H€Jad Librarian of 
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New 
York City, which provides extensive refer-
ence services in the field of Holocaust re-
search. 
A new 18-volume facsimile series of key 
documents and photographs from international archives 
ARCHIVES OF THE HOLOCAUST 
Edited by Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton 
This series presents a broad selection of primary historical sources drawn from 20 archives in the 
United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, and Israel. The documents are published in facsimile form 
to insure authenticity: the reader will see exact copies of the originals, complete with letterheads, date 
stamps, deletions, insertions, corrections, handwritten notes, marginalia, and signatures. · 
A wide range of topics is covered, including: the Nazi state and its institutions and policies of terror; 
concentration camps; the persecution of Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, and political and religious 
dissenters; relief, rescue, and emigration from 1933to 1945; displaced persons and resettlement after 
the war; and the postwar prosecution of Nazi war criminals. 
18-volume set: $2,475. Volumes are also available separately. 
A 39-volume facsimile series reproducing over 1,900 rare documents 
THE RISE OF ISRAEL 
A Documentary Record from the Nineteenth Century to 1948 
General Editor: Howard M. Sachar 
39-volume set: $4,105. Volumes are also available separately. 
A reveellng documentary survey of United States government actions during one of 
the most barbaric events In modern history 
AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST 
Edited by David S. Wyman 
"Vital for the education of future generations ... they present irrefutable documentary evidence." 
-Frank Freidel, Harvard University 
13-volume set: $1,420. Volumes are also available separately. 
An 18-volume collectlon of primary documents 
THE HOLOCAUST 
Edited by John Mendelsohn et al. 
"This work will occupy a special place of distinction in ths voluminous Holocaust literatures. 
It is not another anthology but a major collection of primary and unique documents, many of them 
never previously published. It is a major enduring work of first-rate scholarship that is destined to 
become a classic in Holocaust scholarship. • -Choice 
18-volume set: $1,350. Volumes are also available separately. 


Serially Speaking

Fish, Varda

Noah and the Great Flood: The Metamorphosis of the Biblical Tale

Caruso, Naomi

, 
demotion of the Berlin liberal seminary 
from the status of Hochschule to that of 
Lehranstalt in 1934. On this basis, as 
well, it claimed that Spanier did not 
qualify: the Lehranstalt, as a mere 
"institute" not of university rank, was 
clearly inferior academically to the 
Hebrew Union College, and the immi-
gration law was understood to exclude 
the grant of a nonquota visa to a 
scholar coming from an institution of 
lesser status abroad to one of higher 
status in the United States. 
(Meyer, 1976, p. 364) 
Conclusions 
These being the facts, what are we to 
make of them? Librarians who see aca-
demic research and publication as com-
plementing their professional duties as 
bibliographers or administrators may be in-
clined to identify with Spanier, projecting 
themselves into the cruel situation in which 
he was trapped, trying to feel the crushing 
disappointment and sense of abandon-
ment he must have experienced. Indeed, 
some might be tempted to hear a parody 
The Jewish Public Library of Montreal: 
a Portrait of the Founders 
Naomi Caruso 
Jewish Public Library 
Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
The Jewish Public Library of Montreal be-
gan celebrating i(s 75th anniversary start-
ing in May, 1989. This unique institution is 
both a lending library open to the general 
public and a specialized Judaica Re-
source Center serving academics and re-
searchers who are drawn by such special 
collections as the Jewish Canadiana and 
the Library Archives. There is no other li-
brary quite like it in all of North America. 
To commemorate the 75th birthday, the Li-
brary has published an update of its his-
tory (Caruso, 1989). The following article is 
based on one of the chapters that ap-
pears in it. 
There were several attempts to establish a 
Jewish library in Montreal in the early 
1900s, all of them ending in failure. It was 
probably because of the fortuitous meeting 
of two intellectual giants, Reuven Brainin 
and Yehuda Kaufmann, that the attempt in 
1913 finally bore fruit; on May 1, 1914, the 
Jewish Public Library opened its doors. 
Neither Brainin nor Kaufmann stayed long 
in Montreal, yet during the short time that 
they lived there, they transformed the face 
of the Jewish community. Almost every ed-
ucational and cultural institution that exists 
today in the city can trace its origins to 
these two men. 
on the words of the Passover Haggadah . .._ ______________ __, 
Yehuda Kaufmann Where the text relates regarding the evil 
son, 1/u hayah sham, lo hayah nig'al ("Had 
he been there, he would not have been 
saved"), some might hear, 1/u hayinu sham, 
he-hayinu nig'alim? ("Had we been there, 
would we have been saved?") 
Nowhere in this piece have I used the word 
"tragic," because to my mind the word 
brings up the classical definition which im-
plies a fatal flaw in the individual involved. 
What was Spanier's flaw? rhat he was a 
Jew? That he was a librarian? Being a Jew 
was an .accident of birth. And as for the 
choice of his profession, are we to consider 
ourselves equally "flawed?" This discus-
sion leads to another word, "hero," one 
who, according to classical definition, 
demonstrates courage and nobility in the 
face of adversity. Was Spanier coura-
geous? Was he noble? I do not actually 
know, but I would like to think he was. 
We, the generations following the Shoah 
(Holocaust), recognize that we have an ob-
ligation to remember. But how difficult it is 
for us to "remember" names we will never 
know and recognize faces we will never 
see. When I began to prepare this sketch, 
it was my intention that a photograph of 
Arthur Spanier accompany it, for, I be-
lieved, to be able to put the features of his 
face to his name would enhance his hu-
manity. So far, however, I have been un-
successful in locating a photograph of him. 
But never mind. We know who Arthur 
(Continued in col. 2) 
MILLER (Continued) 
Spanier was, and we know what he stood 
for in life. We refuse to deny him the im-
mortality that is memory. By our choosing 
to be Judaica librarians, we tie ourselves 
to him .... We become his legatees .... 
We are his kaddish. 
Sources 
Lowenthal, Ernst G. Bewahrung im Untergang 
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1965), 
pp. 162-164. 
Meyer, Michael. "The Refugee Scholars Project 
of the Hebrew Union College," in A Bicentennial 
Festschrift for Jacob Rader Marcus (New York: 
Ktav, 1976), pp. 359-375. 
"Spanier, Arthur," Encyclopaedia Judaica 
(Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), vol. 15, col. 247. 
Taeubler, Eugen. "Arthur Spanier, 1889-1944," 
in Historia Judaica, vol. 7 (1945), p. 96. 
Dr. Philip E. Miller is Librarian of The Klau 
Library at the Brookdale Center of Hebrew 
Union College-Jewish Institute of Re-
ligion in New York City. 
80 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 
Yehuda Kaufmann (1886-1976) came to 
Montreal in 1913 to join relatives who were 
living here. He came from a wealthy, well-
educated family in Balta, Podolia, that had 
lost everything after the pogroms. While in 
Montreal he studied at McGill University, 
from which he received a Bachelor of Arts 
in 1915. His proposal for a graduate thesis 
in Jewish Studies was rejected by McGill, 
however, so he was forced to leave 
Montreal in 1916 for Dropsie College (Phil-
adelphia), where in 1918 he obtained his 
doctorate. His dissertation was on the 
great Bohemian Rabbi Yorn Tov Lippman 
Muelhausen, who lived in Prague in the 
14th century. 
Kaufmann's connection with Montreal con-
tinued beyond 1916, because of his ongo-
ing ties with the Folks Shule's Teachers 
Seminary, where he regularly gave lec-
tures. In 1926 he was invited by Haim 
Nahman Bialik, at that time the editor of 
The Dvir Publishing House in Tel Aviv, to 
come to Palestine and compile a Hebrew-
English dictionary. He worked at Dvir until 
1947, when he left to conduct his own re-
search. His studies on Moses ben Maimon 
(Even Shmuel, 1935) and Judah Halevi 
(Even Shmuel, 1973), whose lives he often 
thought paralleled his own, are well-known 
and still in print, as is his dictionary. 
Even in his twenties, Yehuda Kaufmann 
signed his name lbn Shmuel, meaning the 
son of Shmuel. But in 1947, when his own 
--
Reuven Brainin 
Credit: Jewish Public Library Archives 
son Shmuel met with a tragic end, he for-
mally changed his name from Kaufmann to 
Even Shmuel, meaning a stone for his son. 
Even Shmuel lived to the ripe age of 90, by 
all accounts a wonderful man. He was con-
sidered a great conciliator, always seeking 
to find common ground between different 
factions, such as secular Jews and Orth-
odox, Zionists and anti-Zionists, Hassidim 
and Mithnagdim. He was a brilliant 
speaker, an inspired teacher, and a tireless 
researcher. In retrospect, the three years 
that he spent in Montreal were but a short 
episode in his long and productive life. 
Reuven Brainin 
Reuven Brainin (1862-1939) was born in 
Liady, White Russia, to a very poor and re-
ligious family. He was 17 years old before 
he read his first secular book, beginning 
his long journey away from his traditional 
roots. He left Russia in his twenties, set-
tling first in Vienna and then in Berlin. He 
was a journalist by profession, who 
churned out words for a living, but. his true 
love was the Hebrew language. He spent 
all his spare time and effort at reviving the 
old sacred language and transforming it 
into a modern communication tool. In the 
Hebrew journals of his time, he wrote 
about art and music, about love and 
travel-becoming the hero for thousands 
of young shtetl dwellers, who read his arti-
cles voraciously. He came to represent the 
model of the new Jew, someone who could 
remain Jewish at home and adopt Western 
culture outside. ' 
Brainin first came to Montreal in 1909, dur-
ing a lecture tour of North America. When 
he returned in 1912, to assume the edi-
torship of the Kanader Adler, the Yiddish 
daily newspaper, he was fifty years old-a 
man already on the decline. Unlike Kauf-
mann, for whom Montreal represented the 
stepping stone to a long and productive 
career, Brainin's best years were behind 
him. The golden years of promise were 
over. The potential for fame and greatness 
were exhausted, yet in the "backwoods" of 
Montreal in the 191 Os, the impact of his 
presence was tremendous. 
The Jewish population of Montreal in 1912 
numbered 28,000, representing a growth 
of 20,000 in just ten years. This huge influx 
of immigrants fundamentally changed the 
fabric ofthe community. In contrast to the 
first Jewish settlers, the newcomers were 
from Eastern Europe, primarily Yiddish 
speaking. They were an unruly group, un-
skilled and self-educated, who brought 
with them their pronounced ideological 
and religious differences. They became 
known as the Downtown Jews. The 
Kanader Adler was their mouthpiece, and 
the Jewish Public Library was their second 
home. 
This was the environment in which 
Brainin-he of the fastidious nature and of 
the impeccable clothes who used to sum-
mer in Marienbad and winter in Merana-
found himself when he arrived. Brainin be-
came the spokesman of the Downtown 
Jews. He "endured" the relationship for 
four years. 
In 1916 he left for New York, hoping to re-
capture some of his former reputation by 
becoming the editor of the Hebrew journal 
Hatoren. Yet while he was in Montreal, he 
dedicated himself to his job fully. It was his 
vision and enthusiasm that kept the Li-
brary going in those first two years. At the 
first annual meeting, Brainin excoriated 
Jews who stood aside and did not actively 
participate in their institutions. During a 
tag-day in February, 1915, when more 
than 100 girls stood on street corners in 
the cold, and collected pennies for the Li-
brary, it was Brainin and his wife who 
served them warm drinks when they were 
done. 
At every opportunity, he tried to convey to 
the people his love for books and what 
they meant for him. Here are some of his 
own words on the subject: 
I love people but I love books more ... 
Not everyone has the means to buy 
books, that is why the Public Library in-
tends to make it possible for everyone 
to enjoy the cultural treasures of our 
people as well as other people's. Our 
People's Library is the only Jewish 
democratic cultural institution in the 
whole of Canada that has no affiliation 
and therefore has the support and sym-
pathy of all classes and all movements 
within Judaism. 
Further information on Brainin is found in 
an article published-in a prior issue of this 
journal (Caruso, 1987). 
The Kaufmann-Brainin Relationship 
It is difficult to imagine two men more dif-
ferent than Brainin and Kaufmann. They 
differed in age, temperament, and lifestyle. 
Kaufmann admired Brainin greatly. Though 
Kaufmann was 24 years younger, he knew 
Brainin by reputation. During 1912...,·1913, 
when various attempts were made to amal-
gamate the Poalei Zion Library with the 
Baron de Hirsch Reading Room, Kauf-
mann-through sheer force of person~ 
ality-convinced the membership to invite 
Brainin to be the President of a Jewish 
People's Library and University, a brand 
new enterprise, rather than reorganize an 
old one. According to Sam Belkin, a con-
temporary of both men, Kaufmann was the 
real force behind the founding of the JPL-
and yet he is the one who is remembered 
the least. Brainin himself did not mention 
Kaufmann once in the published portions 
Yehuda Kaufmann 
Credit: Canadian Jewish Congress Na-
tional Archives 
Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 81 
l 
! 
, 
of his diaries. In an unpublished portion of 
Brainin's diaries, however (which Belkin 
found in the archives of the Hebrew Uni-
versity in Jerusalem), there is an entry for 
June 22, 1915, which reads as follows: 
I have here in Montreal only one true 
friend, Yehuda Kaufmann, a friend 
whom I like and who likes me in return. 
He is capable of sharing my grief and 
remaining loyal even if he thought I 
didn't have a penny in my pocket. But 
my friend is under pressure too, so if I 
would confide in him my real situation it 
would cause him great suffering. That is 
why I refrain from telling even this dear 
man about my worries and troubles.· 
(Jewish Public Library, 1964, p. 52) 
This may help to explain why Kaufmann 
did not harbor any resentment against 
Brainin. 
The impression one gets from the little that 
has been written about Kaufmann's years 
in Montreal is that he was a highly disci-
plined and task-oriented person, who ap-
plied himself earnestly to whatever he 
undertook and saw it through to its com-
pletion. Brainin, on the other hand, while 
always highly motivated and goal-oriented, 
lacked the will-power and perseverance to 
see things through. His diary and a vast, 
multilingual correspondence easily dis-
tracted him from his tasks. For two years in 
Montreal, however, the two men formed a 
powerful alliance. 
By the time the Library's second annual 
meeting came around in 1916, neither 
Brainin nor Kaufmann was there. A dis-
heartened Library Committee, headed by 
Leib Zuker, contemplated a bleak future. It 
was feared that the Library would have to 
close. But the Library did not close its 
doors, then or later. The vision that the two 
men had projected proved to be so power-
ful that enough people, in every succeed-
ing generation, dedicated themselves to 
carrying it on and continuing the enter-
prise. And so it is that the Jewish Public 
Library is now celebrating its 75th anniver-
sary. It is interesting to note that it is the 
only enterprise with which Brainin associ-
ated himself, that has endured. 
References 
Caruso, Naomi. "A Shtetl Feminist: Sources in 
the Archives of the Jewish Public Library in 
Montreal." Judaica Librarianship vol. 3 no. 
1-2 (1986-1987), p. 31-32. 
Caruso, Naomi, ed. Folk's Lore: A History of the 
JPL, 1914-1989. Montreal: Jewish Public Li-
brary, 1989. 
N e-w and Original froin 
Jason Aronson Inc. 
D The Jewish Time Line Encyclopedia/Mattis Kantor 0-87668-902-0 $50.00 
Over 5,700 years of]ewish history. 
D What You Thought You Knew about Judaism/Reuven Bulka 0-87668-867-9 
$30.00 Debunks over 300 commonly held misconceptions. 
D The Lamp of God: A Jewish Book of Light/Freema Gottlieb 0-87668-898-9 
$35.00 How the metaphor of light is used in Jewish ritual and thought. 
D The Classic Tales: 4,000 Years of Jewish Lore/Ellen Frankel 0-87668-904-7 
$39.95 Three hundred classic Jewish tales. 
D The Mishnah: An Introduction/Jacob Neusner 0-87668-876-8 $25.00 
Gives us a tour of this sacred text. 
D The Sustaining Utterance/Adin Steinsaltz 0-87668-845-8 $20.00 
Explicates basic theological notions in classic Chasidic thought. 
D Jewish Marital Status/Carol Diament 0-87668-870-9 $30.00 
Forty-four essays by professionals and laypeople. 
D A Treasury of Jewish Anecdotes/LaUJrence ]. Epstein 0-87668-890-3 $25.00 
A provocative collection of touching, instructive, and uproariously funny 
stories. 
D A Guide to Life: Jewish Laws and Customs of Mouming/Tzvi 
Rabinowicz 0-87668-833-4 $25.00 Covers all aspects of Jewish mourning 
rituals. 
D The Jewish Home: A Guide for Jewish Living/Daniel B. Syme 
0-87668-825-3 $25.00 Describes how the holiday and life cycle rites are ob-
served and the concepts and historic events that brought them to be. 
D The Sages Speak: Rabbinic Wisdom and Jewish Values/William B. Silver-
man 0-87668-829-6 $25.00 The basic religious and moral values of the Jewish 
heritage. 
D When Mourning Comes: A Book of Comfort for the Grieving/William B. 
Silverman and Kenneth M. Cinnamon 0-87668-820-2 $20.00 
The authors help readers find a spiritual context for their grief. 
D One Little Goat-Had Gadya/Betsy Platkin Teutsch 0-87668-824-5 $16.95 
An elegant presentation of the traditional Passover song for young and old alike. 
For further information or to order, please contact Nancy Scholem, 
sales representative, at 1-800-441-9909. 
Jason Aronson Inc. • 230 Livingston Street• Northvale, NJ 07647 
Even Shmuel, Yehuda. Moshe ben Maiman: 
Sefer Moreh Nevukhim. Tel-Aviv: Shvil, 1935-
Even Shmuel, Yehuda. Sefer ha-Kuzari. Tel-
Aviv: Dvir, 1973. 
Jewish Public Library. Fiftieth Jubilee, 
1914-1964. Montreal: Jewish Public Library, 
1964. 
Naomi Caruso is the former Director of the 
Jewish Public Library of Montreal. She is 
currently working on a Masters degree in 
Jewish Studies at McGill University. Her 
thesis will be based on Chava Shapiro's 
letters to Reuven Brainin. 
82 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 5 No. 1 Spring 1989-Winter 1990 


The Jewish Public Library of Montreal: A Portraits of thte Founders

Adler, Leah

Index to Volume 4

Ekman, Richard

I 
Judaica Librarianship: The View from the Humanities 
Richard Ekman 
It is important to remember that the state 
of the humanities cannot be described as 
a monolith. These days some disciplines 
are experiencing boom times, while others 
are not. Statistical evidence, for example, 
suggests that the study of history is in 
decline in American colleges and univer-
sities, whereas the study of foreign lan-
guages is experiencing a tremendous _ 
upsurge, with Latin particularly in demand. 
Meanwhile, despite ambivalent statistical 
evidence, enormous changes are taking 
place in the accepted view of what should 
be taught under the banner of English. In 
the last ten or fifteen years, English depart-
ments have begun to teach not only English 
and American literature but also foreign 
literatures in translation, film, popular cul-
ture, folk culture, literary theory without the 
literature itself, creative writing, and exposi-
tory writing. 
The presentations earlier in this conference 
have made repeated references to the 
remarkable growth of Jewish studies, both 
as a program in the undergraduate and 
graduate curriculum and as a subject for 
scholarly research. In light of the widely 
divergent recent experiences of even the 
disciplines of the humanities that are 
represented in all of the 3,200 colleges and 
universities in America, I think we need to 
ask how best to explain the remarkable 
growth of Jewish studies. This field has not 
simply been carried along by a tide that has 
favored all fields of the humanities. 
Some factors are obvious: the subject is no 
longer exclusively of interest to Jews; the 
subject is intrinsically interdisciplinary, and 
thus benefits from the general increase of 
interest in interdisciplinary work; and, like 
most interdisciplinary fields, this one invites 
participation by scholars in many areas. 
In some ways, the growth of Jewish studies 
is characteristic of the growth of other 
branches of religious studies. For example, 
at the National Endowment for the Human-
ities we see a great many proposals for the 
revision of the curricula of college· and 
university religion departments, often predi-
cated on the goal of making them less the-
ological and more humanistic. A number of 
Jesuit colleges and universities hope to 
receive NEH help to revise the religion cur-
riculum in ways that would, in effect, make 
it more secular. In some ways, this develop-
ment parallels what appears to be happen-
ing in Jewish studies. 
But the recent institutional history of Jew-
ish studies resembles that of religious 
studies less than it does ethnic studies, 
area studies, and some other so-called new 
fields in the curriculum. I think the differ-
ences among the patterns of growth of 
these fields are instructive. Women's 
studies, for example, was introduced origi-
nally as a construct that, it was argued, 
would create new subjects and new con-
ceptions of subject matter to make the cur-
riculum more "relevant" to the larger 
numbers of female students who began to 
appear on campuses in the 1960s. That 
rationale stands in contrast to the one that 
was advanced most frequently during the 
past decade for the introduction of Asian 
studies programs on campus. The argu-
ment was made less frequently on the basis 
of the characteristics of new populations of 
Asian-American students than on the 
grounds that the study of Asia was an over-
looked and important subject for general 
education as a whole. 
Nothing is inevitable in the way in which a 
field develops its institutional form. 
Women's studies, for example, after a 
period of existing solely in separate pro-
grams and departments, has in many 
places been incorporated into traditional 
departments and fields. Ethnic studies pro-
grams, on the other hand, which often stub-
bornly remained separate units in colleges 
and universities, have during the recent 
period of budget strictures not survived at 
all in many institutions. 
Another way to obtain the view "from the 
humanities" is to step away from the gener-
alizations about various institutional pro-
grams and to review the trends suggested 
by the many individual and institutional 
applications submitted to NEH. (I recognize 
that the endowment's guidelines radiate 
signals to the field that influence the mix 
of applications that are in fact submitted, 
but the temptation exists nonetheless to 
look at trends in applications as if they were 
valid barometers for the state of particular 
fields of scholarship.) 
The Access program, for example, makes 
grants to libraries and archives for purposes 
that are related to organizing, arranging, 
describing, and making accessible impor-
tant collections of materials. I can assure 
you that applications have been received 
from - and grants made to - many of the 
libraries with major Judaica collections and 
almost all of the archival repositories that 
contain significant Judaica holdings. In 
short, Judaica has not been overlooked by 
the endowment, nor has the endowment 
been overlooked by Judaica collections that 
are looking for financial support. 
Access grants in Judaica have supported, 
in the main, efforts to make manuscripts 
and archival collections available through 
the arrangement and description of their 
contents. We have also received a few 
applications for bibliographic compilations 
of published materials and a few for 
microfilming the contents of overseas col-
lections. 
There is further good news to report. 
Although many applications are not funded, 
my impression in reviewing applications 
received over the past few years is that 
most Jewish studies and Judaica applica-
tions to the Access program have been 
considered by peer evaluators to be on wor-
thy and significant topics. That is, the flaws 
of these proposals are, for the most part, 
technical. It is thus reassuring to note that 
while not all applicants make a good case 
that they will do what they say they want 
to do according to a methodology and work 
plan in which evaluators have confidence, 
a higher percentage of applicants are try-
ing to do something that, in the view of peer 
evaluators, is significant. 
In the Access program the endowment 
emphasizes the support of those collec-
tions that have national and international 
significance to scholars and other users. 
Judaica applications do well when meas-
ured against this yardstick, as well. Within 
the past several years, for example, grants 
were awarded to support the processing of 
the World Jewish Congress Archives; the 
bibliography of Jewish Research Literature; 
the E.N. Adler Collection's Genizah 
Cataloging Project; the organization and 
preservation of materials from the Cairo 
synagogue; the archival processing and 
preparation of a guide to the Bund 
Archives; and - as you already know -
Bella Weinberg's preparation of a Yiddish 
authority file for RUN. 
Why do Judaica proposals do so well in the 
Access program? I was prepared to believe, 
based on my reading of editorials in past 
Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 131 
issues of Judaica Librarianship, that your 
field might be in a state of disarray. But my 
impression at this conference is that it is 
a very energetic field, confident in its 
progress, and possessing unusual coher-
ence. Even so, and granting that library col-
lection development and the growth of 
teaching programs frequently go hand in 
hand, I continue to search for the reasons 
why the field of Judaica librarianship seems 
to be so healthy even in institutions whose 
major Judaica collections are not part of 
multipurpose research and teaching insti-
tutions. 
A second N EH grant program also offers 
some clues about the state of Judaica 
librarianship and Jewish studies. The Trans-
lations program, as some of you know, sup-
ports efforts to translate into English texts 
that originally were written in other lan-
guages and for which the case can be 
made convincingly that a large number of 
people need to read the text and could not 
reasonably be expected to read the origi-
nal language. In the Translations program 
we have noted a significant increase in the 
number of proposals to translate Yiddish 
works. These proposals frequently argue 
that the resulting translation will be valua-
ble to both scholars and general readers. 
Curiously, we have seen no parallel 
increase in the number of proposals to 
translate Hebrew texts. These remain a 
small and steady part of the application 
pool. Those that the Endowment does 
receive are intended primarily for scholars. 
Perhaps you know why these trends exist. 
The best I can do is to tell you about a few 
other trends that may have bearing on the 
patterns in Hebrew and Yiddish. For exam-
ple, there seems to be an increasing num-
ber of proposals to translate German texts, 
mostly philosophical treatises; and there is 
an increasing number of proposals to trans-
late East European texts, mostly twentieth-
century political documents. 
Also, proposals to translate Chinese and 
Japanese materials have, for some time, 
been one of the largest component lan-
guage groups represented in the Transla-
tions program, but, for an equally long time, 
these have had a very low success rate in 
the competition for funds. This record 
stands in contrast to the record of Latin and 
Greek proposals, which are small in num-
ber but enjoy a high success rate. The first 
conclusion I tend to draw from some of 
these trends is that in boom fields like East 
Asian studies the best scholars have many 
other available ways to use their time in 
addition to translating texts. In classics, by 
contrast, the essentially philological work 
that is at the heart of the act of translation 
appears to be already considered an impor-
tant activity, so the number of first-rate clas-
sicists who choose to use their time doing 
translations remains large. 
Equally suggestive are the Publisher's 
Weekly statistics on translations into English 
from Hebrew and Yiddish (those that 
appeared as hardbound and trade paper-
backs). Four years ago, the number of new 
Hebrew titles translated into English was 
close to the number of Swedish and Dan-
ish and lower than the numbers for Latin 
and Dutch. But over the past four years, a 
marked increase has occurred in the num-
ber of Hebrew translations. Hebrew can 
now be grouped with Latin and Dutch, not 
Swedish and Danish. Translations from Yid.: 
dish, meanwhile, throughout this period 
have been few - ten to fifteen per year in 
comparison with thirty to forty for Hebrew. 
The numbers for Yiddish are even smaller 
than those for Swedish and Danish. 
In both the Translations and Access pro-
grams the success rate for Judaica and 
Jewish studies proposals is about average. 
It is worth noting that in the Access program 
a very large number of applications are 
received for support of Judaica collections 
in relation to the size of the field. Thus even 
with an average rate of success, a relatively 
large number of grants are made each year. 
In a recent Access application cycle, for 
example, there were 166 applications under 
review, of which nine were in Judaica. Even 
two grants would represent an above-
average success rate. 
In summarizing the comments made by 
reviewers and panelists, I think it is also fair 
to say that Jewish studies and Judaica 
librarianship are fields in which one is more 
likely to stumble upon longstanding con-
troversies than in most fields. A relatively 
large number of the proposals that the 
endowment receives in Jewish studies and 
Judaica receive sharply divided specialist 
reviews. 
Most of the speakers at this conference 
have acknowledged a trend toward greater 
coordination among libraries and between 
librarians and scholars. In this regard, your 
field is like most fields of the humanities. 
One of the most exciting dimensions of 
these increased efforts at coordination is 
the prospect of greater international 
cooperation. One logical next step, for 
example, might be to address the need to 
enhance access by American scholars to 
the Hebrew manuscript collection of the 
Jewish National and University Library. The 
internationalization of scholarship is an 
important theme in the humanities today 
partly, I suspect, because new technology 
now makes it possible for scholars in scat-
tered places around the globe genuinely to 
work together. Organizations such as the 
132 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 
International Research and Exchanges 
Board, the Social Science Research Coun-
cil, the American Council of Learned Soci-
eties, and the Committee on Scholarly 
Communication with the People's Repub-
lic of China - all of which the endowment 
supports heavily - also provide great 
assistance in these efforts. 
The internationalization of scholarship and 
of librarianship suggests a number of 
opportunities. Since Menahem Schmelzer 
gave us an ample list of worthwhile projects 
earlier today, I'd like to mention only one 
additional activity. Most of you know, I think, 
that the endowment frequently seizes upon 
public celebrations and anniversaries in 
order to give emphasis to opportunities for 
work in the humanities that, while always 
worthwhile, can be conducted on a grander 
scale if connected to the anniversary. Hav-
ing just finished a multiyear initiative on the 
bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, the 
endowment is now beginning to focus on 
the 1992 Columbian Quincentenary. Not 
surprisingly, the government of Spain is 
also planning a major celebration, and its 
theme - even more than the American -
suggests opportunities for you. The Span-
ish theme goes something like this: Span-
ish culture derives principally from two 
other cultures, the Arabic and the Jewish; 
these mixed with medieval Christianity and 
produced an amalgam, unique among the 
countries of Western Europe, that made 
possible an era of Renaissance 
entrepreneurial activity; this peculiarly 
Spanish culture opened up the Western 
hemisphere. Please understand that I am 
oversimplifying a theme that the Spaniards 
themselves would admit is necessarily 
expressed in overly simple terms. I think 
you can see nonetheless the opportunity 
for Judaica librarianship. One project, 
already announced by the Spaniards, for 
example, is likely to lead to the reestablish-
ment of the Toledo School of Translators, 
which was, as you know, an excellent exam-
ple of the thirteenth-century fusion of Chris-
tian, Arab, and Jewish culture and was 
destroyed only at the time of the Inquisition. 
I would urge you to think about projects of 
international scope that would make 
materials available to scholars throughout 
the world, including North American, Span-
ish, and Latin American repositories. 
Let me conclude by returning to the general 
question of the "view from the humanities" 
of Judaica librarianship. Although the state 
of Judaica librarianship suggests both 
encouraging and discouraging facets, I 
prefer to congratulate you on your progress, 
note your optimism, and urge you to pur-
sue the many promising opportunities that 
are open to you. As in the past, the endow-
ment continues to be eager to help you. 


Judaica Librarianship: The View from the Humanities

Baker, Zachary M.

RESPONSA 
Finding the Source of a Yiddish Proverb 
Zachary M. Baker 
a. What is the significance of the Yid-
dish expression 'Nit yedn purim treft 
zikh a nes'? 
This was a telephone query, received 
shortly before Purim 5748 (1988). Th~ lit-
eral meaning of the saying is "A miracle 
doesn't happen every Purim," and super-
ficially it seems to refer to the rescue of the 
Jews of Persia from the murderous inten-
tions of that Biblical arch-villain, Haman. 
But as in the case of so many reference 
questions, there is more here than meets 
the eye. 
Collections of Proverbs 
The first task was to verify the existence of 
such a Yiddish saying. The basic source-
book for Yiddish proverbs is Ignaz Bern-
stein's collection, Yudishe shprikhverter un 
redensarten [Yiddish proverbs and say-
ings]. Bernstein lists ten sayings under the 
heading "Purim," no. 5 of which reads: Nit 
ale Purim treft zikh a nes (Bernstein, 1908, 
p. 201 ). This version of the proverb is identi-
cal in meaning to the version given by 
YIVO's telephone customer. Existence of 
proverb confirmed; the story does not end 
here, however. 
Bernstein cites a Talmudic saying as the 
source for this Yiddish proverb: Lav be-khol 
sha'ata mitrahesh nisa (Megillah 7b), i.e., 
"A miracle doesn't happen every hour." 
Going directly to the source, we find the fol-
lowing Talmudic anecdote (Soncino trans-
lation): 
Raba said: It is the duty of a man to 
mellow himself [with wine] on Purim until 
he cannot tell the difference between 
"cursed be Haman" and "blessed be Mor-
decai". 
Rabbah and R. Zera joined together in a 
Purim feast. They became mellow, and 
Rabbah arose and cut R. Zera's throat. 
On the next day he prayed on his behalf 
and revived him. Next year he said, Will 
your honour come and we will have the 
Purim feast together. He replied: Amira-
cle does not take place on every occa-
sion. (Talmud, 1961, Mo'ed vol. IV, 
Megillah 7b, p. 38) 
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research 
New York, NY 
One can imagine the sarcastic tone with 
which R. Zera delivered that line, which ac-
tually reads Lav be-khol sha'ata ve-sha'ata 
mitrahesh nisa in the original. The fact that 
Rabbah's prayers helped to revive R. Zera 
the previous Purim is no guarantee of their 
success the following Purim, should 
R. Zera again find himself in the uncomfort-
able situation of having his throat slit by 
Rabbah. There are miracles, and then there 
are "miracles." 
This saying is also recorded (under the 
heading "Miracles") in A Treasury of Jewish 
Quotations, where it is rendered, "Miracles 
do not happen each day" (Baron, 1956, 
p. 312). Two Talmudic sources for the say-
ing are given: Megillah 7b and Pesahim 
50b. The context for the latter citation is 
quite different from the passage in Tractate 
Megil/ah given above: 
Our Rabbis taught: Four perutoth [small 
coins used in Talmudic times] never con-
tain a sign of blessing: the wages of 
clerks, the wages of interpreters, the prof-
its of orphans, and money that came from 
oversea countries. As for ... money 
which comes from overseas, because a 
miracle does not occur every day. ( Tal-
mud, 1961, Mo'ed vol. II, Pesahim 50b, 
pp. 245-246) 
In an effort to clarify this Talmudic "short-
hand," H. Freedman, the translator of this 
tractate, comments: "Considerable danger 
attended the transport of freights at sea, 
and one might very easily suffer loss." In 
other words, money coming from overseas 
regularly ended up at the bottom of the sea 
instead of at its intended destination-
hence, its receipt could never be taken for 
granted. The Aramaic original reads slightly 
differently from the saying in Tractate 
Megillah: Lav kol yoma mitrahesh nisa. 
Reuben Alcalay's Basic Encyclopedia of 
Jewish Proverbs, Quotations and Folk 
Wisdom (1973) is an excellent source of 
Hebrew proverbs in English translation, 
and it also includes the Talmudic saying 
cited by Bernstein as the source for the Yid-
dish proverb that was the subject of our ini-
tial inquiry. Here, under the heading 
"Miracle," the saying from Tractate Megillah 
206 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 
is translated, "A miracle does not happen 
every hour." Directly underneath this 
proverb is another popular Talmudic saying, 
En somkhin 'al ha-nes (Pesahim 64b), ren-
dered here as, "One must not rely on mira-
cles happening." Freedman translates this 
saying as "We do not rely on a miracle" 
(Talmud, 1961, Mo'edvol. II, Pesahim 64b, 
p. 325). 
Dictionaries 
Alcalay, in his Complete Hebrew-English 
Dictionary (1974, col. 1648), records 
slightly different versions of these two prov-
erbs-Lo be-khol yam mitrahesh nes and 
En somkhim 'al ha-nes-without, however, 
offering sources for them. 
Hebrew dictionaries are, in general, a good 
source for tracking down Biblical sayings 
and traditional Hebrew an'd Aramaic prov-
erbs. Avraham Even-Shoshan, in his 
Milon badash, includes the Hebrew ver-
sions of the two sayings that are recorded in 
Alcalay's Dictionary, along with citations for 
Talmudic tractates and brief explanations. 
Lo be-khol yam mitrahesh nes is explained 
by Even-Shoshan as follows: "Miraculous 
events do not happen every day; accord-
ingly, one cannot rely on them." In addition, 
he cites the Aramaic version of this proverb, 
as given in Tractate Pesahim 50b, but does 
not mention the variant in Megillah 7b, 
noted by Ignaz Bernstein as the inspiration 
for the Yiddish saying Nit ale Purim treft 
zikh a nes. 
Even-Shoshan explains the saying En 
somkhim 'al ha-nes accordingly: "A person 
must not neglect making every effort out of 
the hope that a miracle will happen to him, 
just as [a miracle] occurred to someone 
else under similar conditions at a different 
time" (Even-Shoshan, 1957-8, v. 2, p. 
1013, translation mine). In other words, be-
cause a miracle happened under similar cir-
cumstances in the past, that doesn't mean 
that a miracle will happen today. 
Concordances 
Another "keyword approach" to tracing Tal-
mudic proverbs is to consult a concordance. 
In 1982, a 31-volume concordance to the 
Talmud, Otsar leshon hatalmud, begun by 
Chaim Josua Kasowski and continued by 
his son Biniamin, was finally completed. 
The Kasowski Talmudic concordance, like 
Salomon Mandelkern's Concordance on 
the Bible (1955), collates all variants of a 
word under their Hebrew or Aramaic root, 
presupposing a certain level of gram-
matical knowledge on the part of the person 
consulting the concordance. Thus, the con-
cept of "miracles" is not to be found in either 
Kasowski's or Mandelkern's concordances 
under nes (nun-samekh), but rather under 
its much rarer tri-consonantal verbal root 
nasas (nun-samekh-samekh). Fortunately 
for those who are not experts in Hebrew 
grammar, Kasowski gives a cross-refer-
ence from nes to nasas (Kasowski, vol. 26, 
p. 1409). 
Hebrew dictionaries are ... a good 
source for tracking down Biblical 
sayings and traditional Hebrew and 
Aramaic proverbs. 
The saying Lo be-khol sha'ata ve-sha'ata 
mitrahesh nisa (Megil/ah7b) appears in Ka-
sowski's concordance under the sub-head-
ing Nisa, together with all other Talmudic 
expressions using that word. (Kasowski 
cites this saying as beginning with the word 
lo [lamed-alefj and not /av [lamed-alef-vav]; 
vol. 26, p. 1427). While Bernstein refers 
from a Yiddish proverb to its Talmudic 
source, Kasowski unfortunately does not 
return the favor! 
Talmudic References 
For those who, like the author of this col-
umn, are relatively untutored in rabbinic lit-
erature and are most comfortable working 
in English, some additional observations 
concerning Talmudic references and how to 
locate them now follow. 
A citation that reads "Megillah 7b" refers to 
the verso of the seventh leaf of standard 
printed versions of Tractate Megillah from 
the Babylonian Talmud. Megillah belongs 
to the Order Mo 'ed, a section of both the 
Mishnah and Gemara (elaborations on the 
Mishnah, which together with the Mishnah 
comprise the Talmud) dealing with the Sab-
bath and other Jewish holidays and fasts. 
There are six orders to the Mishnah, and 
one common way of referring to the entire 
Talmud is to call it the Shas, the Hebrew 
acronym for Shishah Sidre Mishnah [the six 
orders of the Mishnah]. (According to the 
Encyclopaedia Judaica, the Gemara of the 
Babylonian Talmud comments on only 36 of 
the 63 tractates of the Mishnah ("Talmud, 
Babylonian," EJ, vol. 15, col. 768).) 
The volumes of the Soncino English trans-
lation of the Talmud are not numbered se-
quentially. Each spine displays only the 
name of the order and the volume number 
within that order. Therefore, to select the 
appropriate volume, one must know that 
tractate Megillah is part of order Mo'ed. (At 
VIVO, we have affixed labels to each vol-
ume, listing the tractates contained in it.) 
The density of Talmudic text can some-
times make it difficult to track down a quote, 
even when one has a page reference in 
hand. The English translation of Megillah 
_ 7b, for example, ranges from the end of 
p. 37 to the middle of p. 41 of the Soncino 
edition, which means that it is necessary to 
comb through almost four pages of text in 
order to locate the passage that reads, "A 
miracle does not take place on every occa-
sion." There may be an easier way: After 
locating the pages in the Soncino transla-
tion that correspond to leaf 7b of Tractate 
Megillah in printed versions of the original 
Talmud, one can then turn to the index to 
this tractate, which follows the text. (There 
may be several tractate indexes within a 
single volume of the Soncino Talmud.) Un-
der the keyword "Miracle," there are six 
separate page references, only one of 
which (p. 38) falls within the range of pages 
covering Megil/ah 7b. That is where the 
story about Rabbah and R. Zera is to be 
found. (This technique works well with un-
ambiguous keywords, but not with vague 
concepts.) 
A cumulative index volume to the entire 
Soncino translation of the Talmud also ex-
ists, and there, too, under the heading 
"Miracles," six references to Tractate 
Megil/ah are given. (Unfortunately, the 
page reference for the quotation that we are 
trying to trace is misprinted in the cumula-
tive index as 35f, instead of 38. Caveat lec-
tor.) The index volume, which was compiled 
by Judah J. Slotki, includes a general (sub-
ject) index, a list of scriptural (biblical) refer-
ences appearing in the Talmud, a rabbinical 
index (rabbis quoted in the Talmud), and a 
glossary. With the exception of the· rab-
binical index, all these reference aids also 
appear at the end of each tractate in the 
Soncino edition of the Talmud. 
Returning to the Yiddish proverb, the say-
ing Nit ale Purim iz (treft zikh) a nes is re-
corded in Nahum Stutchkoff's thesaurus, 
Der oytser funder yidisher shprakh (Stutch-
koff, 1950, p. 728), along with a number of 
other sayings pertaining to the Feast of Es-
ther. Both Stutchkoff and Bernstein include 
a second saying that refers specifically to 
the miracle of Purim: Ven ale tog zol zayn 
der nes fun Purim, vos voltn yidn gehat tsu 
zorgn mit zeyere tekhter? This proverb can 
be translated as follows: "If the miracle of 
Purim happened every day, would there be 
any reason for Jews to worry about their 
daughters?" Bernstein interprets this 
proverb accordingly: "Since Ahasuerus 
would have their daughters brought into his 
harem, parents would be relieved of.the bur-
den of raising a dowry." I'm not sure that 
today's parents would consider that to be 
such a "miracle.''. 
References 
Alcalay, Reuben, comp. A Basic Encyclopedia of 
Jewish Proverbs, Quotations, and Folk 
Wisdom, Presented in English with Hebrew 
Originals and Arranged Alphabetically by Sub-
ject. With Mordekhai Nurock. New York: 
Hartmore House, 1973. 
Alcalay, Reuben. The Complete Hebrew-English 
Dictionary. Revised edition. Bridgeport, CT: 
Published for Media Judaica, Inc. by The 
Prayer Book Press/Hartmore House, 1974.1 
Baron, Joseph L., ed. A Treasury of Jewish 
Quotations. New York: Crown Publishers, 
1956. 
Bernstein, Ignaz, comp. Yudishe shprikhverter 
un redensarten [added t.p.: J0dische Sprich-
worter und Redensarten . .. 2-te, vermehrte 
und verbesserte Aufl., mit §egen0ber-
stehender Transkription, Index und Glossar]. 
With B. W. Segel. 2nd ed. Warsaw: 1908.2 
Encyclopaedia Judaica. Jerusalem: Keter, 1972. 
16 vols. 
Even-Shoshan, Avraham. Milon f:ladash, men-
ukad umetsuyar. 6th ed. Jerusalem: Kiryat 
Sefer, 1957-1958. 5 vols.3 
Kasowski, Chaim Josua, comp. Otsar leshon ha-
talmud [ added t. p.: Thesaurus Talmudis; Con-
cordan tiae Verborum quae in Talmude 
Babylonico Reperiuntur]. With Biniamin Ka-
sowski. Jerusalem: The Ministry of Education 
and Culture, Government of Israel & The Jew-
ish Theological Seminary of America, 
1954-1982. 31 vols. 4 
Mandelkern, Salomon. Konkordantsiyah la-
torah, nevi'im u-khetuvim [added t.p.: 
Concordance on the Bible]. New ed., rev., corr., 
and completed by Chaim Mordecai Bracher, 
with supplementary corrections and notes by 
Abraham Avrunin; with an English introd. by 
Harry Freedman and incorporating Otzar 
halexicografia haivrit by A. R. Malachi. New 
York: Shulsinger Bros., 1955. 2 vols.s 
Stutchkoff, Nahum. Der oyster funder yidisher 
shprakh [added t.p.: Thesaurus of the Yiddish 
language]. Ed. by Max Weinreich. New York: 
Yiddish Scientific Institute-VIVO, 1950.6 
Talmud. English. The Babylonian Talmud. 
London: The Soncino Press, 1961. 18 vols. 
Judaica Librarianship VQI. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 207 
Hebrew Bibliographic Data 
)lv,,_.,,p .'(N)PN ,P'D\!JnY:J .2 
,Y\.J2 . ,)l"iNtil)l_.,,)1-, ,,N W".,)111!>'.,D\!I 
Y\.JiYtlY:JiY!l 11N Y\.Jii1YY.liY!l j?iN\.J\!J 
\.JNi1 t,y ,y:,'.;,y11 n:i ,.J!l')N 
:'1\!JiNn .JY)Y~ .n .:i 1Y!lJNi1Y)\.J'Y.l 
. 1908 - n"ti,ri 
_.,,1'lt:> ,\!l_.,,n ,,,,:, .Oi1i:JN ,1\!J)\!J-1:lN .3 
-Tl'ij? :O'J\!J)i' .Tl'\!J\!J i1'1)1i1Y.l .,,¥t:>1 
.',:, 5 .[1957-1958] n",\!Jri ,,!lti 
,,v, i¥1N .Y\!J1i1' onn ,'Pt111NtiNp .4 
'11t:>'N'1t:>1'1 ,Dti :_.,,,,:,,nr, 
,1t1, 1,Y .,,:i:i ...,,,:,,n, (1'1'¥3...,,,pnp) 
PY.l'):l ,n i1\!J1n i1\.J'\!J '"!lY 
1Dni1 1i\!JY.l :O'J\!J)"l' .['j?tl11Nt1Nj?] 
r,,:i, JN,\!J' TlJ\!Jr.ir.i J\!J m:i,rim 
31 .1982-1954 ,i1j?'i)'.)N:J O'):liJ \!Ji1)'.)i1 
.'"lJ 
,n,,n, 1'1'¥li,1p31;, .nr.iJ\!J ,i,p'.;,1m .5 
rimm ,i1\!J1n nx~m .0,:i,n:,, 0'N'!ll 
oy ,,:,,:i ,:,1,r.i onn ,,, '.;,y mpmm 
Oi1i:JN TlN)'.) m,ym O'))j?Tl ,O'N) J):l 
)ii1N TlN)'.) Tl'J))N:l Nnr.i oy ;r)n:JN 
i~)N Tl')J:l )NY.l1'i!l .Y.l 
.i.N TlN)'.) Tl'"l:lYi1 i1'!lNi))j?'tlJ'Ji1 
,,n,r'.;,nv □'nNn ,p,,,_,,) _,:,x',r.i 
. ',:, 2 .1955 - )"\.J\!Jrl 
.,,,..., ,,D ,¥,N .,,,, .o,n) ,nNj?\!J\.J)\'.)tJ .6 
Y'~j?N1Yi i),11 "l}'t)))N . jN.,9\!I .,)l\!l'i" 
'1Y\!J'1" : [j?"lN'-P) l -l"i)")) tlj?NY.l 1)!:l 
,xnn - \.J)\'.)'\.JtJ)'N "lYJYJ\.J!lN\!J)tl')) 
.1950 
Zachary M. Baker is Head Librarian at the 
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New 
York). He is also Vice-President/President-
Elect of the Research and Special Libraries 
Division of the Association of Jewish Librar-
ies (1988-1990) and chairs two AJL com-
mittees: the committee on recruitment to 
the profession and the Harold Mason Refer-
ence Book Award committee. 
INDEX TO VOLUME 4 
Compiled by Leah Adler 
Yeshiva University 
New York, NY 
Issue #1, pp. 1-108 
Issue #2, pp. 109-212 
Abramowicz, Dina 
Review of: Yassif, Eli. Jewish Folklore: An 
Annotated Bibliography, 144, 146 
Abramson, Frances Amitay 
Letter, 5 
Adler, David A. 
Sydney Taylor Children's Book Award 
Acceptance Speech, 170, 174 
Adler, Elhanan 
"Judaica Librarianship: The View from 
Israel" 133-137 
"The Use of Israeli Machine-Readable 
Cataloging by American Libraries: A 
Proposal" 23-26 
Letter, 138-139 
Adler, Leah 
"Learning from Our Mistakes" 154 
Review of: Maher, Paul. Hebraica 
Cataloging: A Guide to ALA/LC 
Romanization and Descriptive Cataloging, 
148-150 
ALEF BIT, 6-26 
Letter 138-139 
Aliprand, Joan M . 
Letter (ALEF BIT) 138-139 
American Israelite, Index to Florida Jewish 
History in the, 203-205 
''The American Jewish Historical Society as 
an Archival Agency" 38-39 
American Jewish literature, pathfinder, 96-97 
APPROBATIONS, 27-28, 140-146 
ARCHIVES, 29-39 
Argentina, Jewish publishing in, 62-67 
Association of Jewish Libraries 
Harold Mason Judaica Reference Book 
Award 
1986, 90-91 
1987, 185, 191 
Job Clearinghouse, 89 
Sydney Taylor Book Awards for Children's 
Literature 
1986, 46-50 
Selected List of Contenders, 46-47 
1987, 167-174 
Selected List of Contenders, 168 
Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award 
1986, 51-52 
1987, 174-175 
Baker, Zachary M. 
"Finding the Source of a Yiddish Proverb" 
206-208 
Review of: Brisman, Shimeon. A History and 
Guide to Judaic Encyclopedias and 
Lexicons, 140-143 
Baron, Salo,. Collection, 76-84 
Berger, Pearl 
"Judaica Library Positions- The AJL Job 
Clearinghouse" 89 
Berlin, Charles, ed. 
JUDAICA LIBRARIANSHIP: FACING THE 
FUTURE, 113-137 
Berman, Margot S . 
"Helping Synagogue and Day School 
Students Write Book Reports" 107 
"Reading Motivation Ideas for Synagogue 
Libraries" 99 
Bernstein, Joanne E. 
"Children and Loss" (Summary) 56, 57 
Bible quotations, reading club, 102-104 
Bi bl iog raphy 
Jewish Folklore, 144, 146 
Judaica Reference Works 
1986-1987, 92-95 
1987-1988, 186-191 
Loss in Jewish Children's Literature, 57-59 
New Reference Books from Israel, 193-202 
Register of Judaica Bibliographies in 
Progress, 97, 192 
Selected List of Contenders for the Sydney 
Taylor Book Awards for Children's 
Literature 
1986, 46-47 
1987, 168 
SERIALLY SPEAKING, 98 
Yiddish and Hebrew Works Recently 
Reprinted in Argentina, 63-67 
"Bibliotherapy and Loss: Separation, Divorce, 
and Death in Jewish Children's Literature" 
56-59 . 
"Bibliotherapy and the Judaica Children's 
Librarian" 56, 57 
"Book Mensch: A Reading Motivation Game 
for Jewish Summer Camps" 105-106 
Brandeis University, retrospective conversion, 
20-22 
Brisman, Shimeon 
Harold Mason Judaica Reference Book 
Award Acceptance Letter, 185, 191 
A History and Guide to Judaic 
Encyclopedias and Lexicons (Reviewed 
by Zachary M. Baker) 140-143 
Letter, 138 
Card Production, Hebraica, 14-16 
"Career Prospects of Judaica Librarians" 3-4 
CATALOG DEPARTMENT, 40-45, 148-165, 
177 
"The Central Cataloging Service of the Sinai 
Temple Blumenthal Library" 68-75 
"Children and Loss" (Summary) 56, 57 
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, 46-59, 167-175 
THE CHOSEN BOOK, 60-67 
Classification 
Dead Sea Scrolls, 163-165, 177 
Elazar 
Additions and Variations, Sinai Temple 
Blumenthal Library 74, 75 
A Classification System for Libraries of 
Judaica, 2nd ed. (Review) 176-177 
Library of Congress, Recent Changes, 
153-156 
"Classification of the Judean Desert 
Documents (Dead Sea Scrolls)" 163-165, 
177 
A Classification System for Libraries of 
Judaica, 2nd ed. (Review) 176-177 
(Continued on p. 210) 
208 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 


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