Association of Jewish Libraries Publishing

Eichenbaum, Rose

Adler, David A.

Levitin, Sonia

Sidney Taylor Book Award Acceptance Speeches

Grunberger, Michael W.

From Strength to Strength: Judaica Collections Facing the Future

Brisman, Shimeon

Letter of Acceptance by the Recipient of the Mason Judaica Reference Book Award

Kahane, Libby

English

New Reference Books from Israel

Association of Jewish Libraries

Letters from Our Readers

Weinberg, Bella Hass

From Copy Cataloging to Derived Bibliographic Records: Cataloging and its Automation in American Judaica Research Libraries from the Sixties through the Eighties

Fishman, David E.

The Shorter Encyclopedia Judaica in Russia, by Yitskhak Oren (Nadel), ed.

Lanziger, Susan

, 
·, 
EPISTLE FROM ISRAEL 
Hebrew University 
Conferences and Openings 
Hebrew University marked the 40th anni-
versary of the finding of the Dead Sea· 
Scrolls by holding a conference in coopera-
tion with the Israel Museum's Shrine of the 
Book and the Israel Exploration Society. 
During the sessions held on the Givat Ram 
campus, researchers from five Israeli uni-
versities and the Israel Museum presented 
papers summarizing forty years of re-
search on the historic find, which changed 
the face of Biblical scholarship. Following 
the presentation of papers, a panel moder-
ated by the Chairman of the University's 
Institute of Jewish Studies, Prof. Sarah Ja-
phet, discussed the topic "Qumran Be-
tween Bible and Mishna." Prof. Emanuel 
Tov, Chairman of the Department of Bible, 
presented his view that there were two 
kinds of texts among the Qumran scrolls-
local (written by members of the Essene 
community in Qumran) and imported-and 
that the discovery of the Scrolls provided a 
wealth of new versions for comparison. He 
added that it is still not known why the 
scrolls were hidden in the caves, or whether 
they were actively used by the Essenes or 
kept in a "closed-shelf" library. 
Another important contribution to Jewish 
Studies is the collection which the late Prof. 
Gershom Scholem left to the Jewish Na-
tional and University Library, on Hebrew 
University's Givat Ram campus, and which 
has now been opened to the public. When 
Gershom Scholem arrived in Israel from 
Germany in the 1920s, he brought with him, 
to his home in Jerusalem, 1767 books, of 
which 603 were concerned with various as-
pects of Kabbalah. With his death in 1982, 
the JNUL acquired a collection that num-
bered some 25,000 volumes. Professor 
Scholem requested that his collection be 
kept together, and the JNUL honored this 
request by preparing a special room to 
house the remarkable library. 
Prof. Scholem had worked as a librarian in 
the JNUL in the twenties and wrote to an 
unidentified friend, in a letter dated January 
Susan Lazinger 
Hebrew University 
Jerusalem, Israel 
1, 1924: " ... With regard to my work, I was 
immediately accepted as a librarian and ex-
pert in Hebrew in the National Library, and 
this employment provides me with condi-
tions that seem ideal ... my work is both 
important and pleasant." 
Acquisitions 
The most recent addition to the Albert Ein-
stein Archives at the JNUL is a letter written 
by Einstein in 1923 to a fellow scientist. 
While the letter itself is ordinary enough, 
the story of how it arrived in Jerusalem is 
extraordinary. A Jewish woman who lives 
today in a northern kibbutz spent the war 
years in Theresienstadt, where she be-
came the protege of a Czech laborer who 
worked in a storeroom of confiscated Jew-
ish property. When the letter fell out of a 
folded carpet one day, the laborer put it in 
his pocket. Forty years later, he sent it to her 
at the kibbutz, and when she learned of the 
JNUL's acquisition of the Einstein Archives, 
she brought the letter to Jerusalem to add 
to this national treasurehouse. 
Another recent JNUL acquisition is a collec-
tion of poems and biographical material of 
the Jewish-German poet Else Lasker-
Schueller, along with more than 40 letters 
that she wrote between the years 1936 and 
1944 to N. Zuri (1869-1945), an archae-
ologist and writer at Kibbutz Tel Yosef. 
Lasker-Schueller was an important Ger-
man expressionist poet, whose work has 
recently sparked new interest. During her 
last years, she lived in Jerusalem. The col-
lection was donated to the JNUL, at Zuri's 
request, by his daughter. 
Finally, a recent Judaica auction of 717 
items, including hundreds of books and 
manuscripts saved from the Holocaust, was 
held at the Jerusalem Sheraton Plaza 
Hotel. Sponsored by the Society of Judaica 
Collectors, the marathon auction was at-
tended by two buyers for the National Li-
brary, Zion Shorer and ltzhak Yudlov. The 
highlight of the auction was a bid of $41 ,000 
for a 500-year-old translation of the Canon 
of Medicine written by the Jewish physician 
Abu Ali al-Hussein lbn Abdel-Allah lbn-
Sina, made by an anonymous bidder. 
Shorer and Yudlov, whose budgets have 
been severely cut due to the Hebrew Uni-
versity's financial difficulties, reported that 
several of the European and American 
buyers had pledged in advance to contrib-
ute their acquisitions to the JNUL. 
Fees ... 
The same financial difficulties that curtailed 
the budgets of the National Library's buyers 
led the JNUL to impose an entrance fee of 
NIS 2 ($1.20 per day) on October 1, 1987. 
Despite the exemption of Hebrew Univer-
sity students and faculty-as well as those 
from other universities-from the fee, the 
uproar from disgruntled citizens and en-
raged visitors was so great that two months 
later, on December 1, 1987, the National 
Library decided to do away with the en-
trance fee and impose in its place a bor-
rower's fee of NIS 50 shekels per year, with 
the same readers exempted. According to 
University officials, the need for the fees 
arose because the constantly increasing 
expenses involved in carrying out the na-
tional functions of the library are covered by 
neither the University nor the government. 
And Subsidies 
Assistant Prime Minister and Minister of 
Education ltzhak Navon has confirmed a 
budget of NIS 330,000 to be paid over the 
next year to writers whose books are heav-
ily borrowed from Israel's libraries. This is 
the second year that the subsidy program 
for writers has been in effect, although this 
year the minimum payment has been 
raised from NIS 25 to 100, and the max-
imum payment has been set at NIS 6000 
(about $3,600). All writers of Hebrew prose, 
poetry, drama, literary essays, or children's 
literature, who live permanently in Israel, 
are eligible for the subsidy, which is paid on 
a graduated scale, according to the fre-
quency with which the author's books are 
circulated from libraries throughout the 
country. [A similar system exists in En-
gland.-Ed.] 
Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 179 
Innovations 
Library Link-Ups 
Many of Israel's educational institutions in-
cluding Hebrew Union College, the Sh;ine 
of the Book of the Israel Museum and the 
Jewish Art Center are now or will' soon be 
able to communicate, using modems, with 
th~ computer of the Hebrew University, 
which holds the database of the National 
Library. 
In addition, Israelis can now link up with 
more than 2,000 databases around the 
world-including those of the British Li-
brary, NASA (National Aeronautics and 
Space Administration), and the Library of 
Congress_;.via a global data grid available 
through the Ministry of Energy and In-
frastructure's National Center of Scientific 
and Technological Information (COSTI). 
According to COSTl's director Jacob Lev 
subscribers linked into COSTl's central 
co~puter ~an receive a breathtaking array 
of information on their screens, such as an 
article from the morning's newspapers or 
one from last year's, pinpointed in seconds 
through sophisticated indexing. "In setting 
up this computerized data bank," Lev ex-
Israelis can now link up with more 
than 2,000 databases around the 
world ... 
plains, "Israel is joining a select handful of 
industrialized nations who already enjoy 
such a facility." Headquartered at 84 Ha-
Hashmonaim Street (PO. B. 20125, Tel Aviv 
61201 ), COST! has over 10,000 subscrib-
ers in Israel, including other government 
departments, research institutes, industrial 
enterprises, and the media. The Center op-
erates with a staff of 35, most of whom are 
experts in computers. 
COSTl's news service, which includes En-
glish summaries of the Hebrew press, Gov-
ernment Press Office releases, back-
~round ~ata about Israel, and biographical 
in!ormat1on about Israeli personalities, is 
widely_ ~sed by the Israel and foreign press. 
In add1t1on, COSTI will soon make available 
an electronic edition of The Jerusalem Post 
on optical disk, displaying both text and pic-
tures. 
Index to Hebrew Daily News 
On a similar subject, a member of Kibbutz 
Shamir, Yaniv Ya'akov Pitzer, who is on the 
~taff of the kibbutz library, has compiled an 
index to Hebrew daily newspapers from 
1979, covering a broad range of topics. The 
microfilmed newspapers are available in 
the kibbutz library. 
New Libraries ... 
Three new libraries of rabbinical literature 
opened recently in Israel. The first, in Re-
hovot's "Tikvatenu" Center, was made pos-
sible by two grants of NIS 5000 each from 
the Ministry of Culture and the Rehovot Mu-
nicipality. The second, under the auspices 
of, and located in, Ashkelon's "Uziel" 
School, includes books in four areas: rab-
binic literature, children's literature, refer-
ence works, and pedagogical literature. 
The third library of rabbinic literature, in-
t~n_ded f?r Bnei Brak's Haredi population, is 
d1v1ded into the "Chaim Tovim" [The Good 
Life] Library for children and the "Zahav" 
[Gold] Library for adults. The collections 
currently include 5,000 books on various 
areas of Judaism. 
And One Old Library 
The Polish Library, located on Tel Aviv's Al-
len by Street, recently celebrated its 30th 
anniversary; everyone who visited the li-
brary during the celebration received a 
small souvenir. The Polish Library has long 
served thousands of Israelis whose roots 
are in Poland as a center for culture and 
literature, as well as Judaica, in their native 
tongue. 
An interview with its director, Edmond Neu-
stein, revealed that the library's principal 
problem today is that it serves an aging and 
decreasing population, whose children and 
wandchildren drop in to the library only to 
view books on Judaica or to buy a gift for 
their parents. 
Asked if the library had encountered prob-
lems acquiring books from Poland after Pol-
ish-ls~aeli relations were severed following 
the Six-Day War, Neustein answered that 
for two years after the war, it was indeed 
impossible to acquire books from Poland, 
but after that, he was able to resume order-
ing from the catalogs, which had never 
stopped coming, even during the years 
when there was absolutely no contact be-
tween the two countries. Neustein pointed 
out the surprising fact that in the last few 
years, some 300 books on Judaica have 
been published in Poland. 
When asked what will happen when one 
day the Polish Library closes its doors for 
lack of readers, Neustein answered that he 
sees no possibility for a successor to his 
library when it passes into history. 
Dr. Susan Lazinger recently returned to her 
position as Head Librarian and Lecturer at 
the Graduate School of Library and Archive 
Studi~s at the Hebrew University after 
spendmg a year at Stanford University in 
California. 
180 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 
AB Offers Sample 
Judaica Issues 
A UNIQUE BLEND of scholarship bib-
liography and book trade, AB Book:Uan's 
Weekly includes articles, book reviews and 
a classified marketplace for books. Through 
the pages of AB, learn how to acquire out-
of-print books for your library. Of particu-
lar interest is AB's Special Judaica Issue. 
1986 • The Illustrated Haggadot of Spain and 
Art for the Masses: Hebrew Facsimile Pub-
lishing by Leila Avrin • Yizker Bikher: The 
Literature of Remembrance by Michael 
Grunberger • Max Liebermann: Fighting the 
Current as an Artist and a Jew by Kevin 
Kiddoo . 
1987 • A Survey of 20th Century Artistic Hag-
gadot by Leila Avrin • Scholarly Hebraica -
New, Old and Rare by Jacob L. Chernofsky • 
The Broad Range of Jewish Children's Books 
by Marcia W. Posner• Collecting Old Maps of 
the Holy Land by Eva Wajntraub 
1988 • Hand-Painted Haggadot of the 18th 
Century by Leila Avrin • Archival Collec-
tions: Living Jyiemorials to the Holocaust by 
Abraham Blmderman • Isaac Bashevis 
Singer: Storyteller with a Mission by Jacob L. 
Chernofsky 
198~ • The Origins and Development of the 
Jewish Poster by Leila Avrin • The History 
and Art of the Hebrew Book • Memories of 
Books and Family Life in Israel by Ann 
Levine 
Send to: AB Bookman's Weekly, Judaica Dept. 
P.O. Box AB, Clifton, NJ 07015 
1986 --- copies 1988 ___ copies 
1987 copies 1989 ___ copies 
(Note: limited copies available) 
Name ____________ _ 
Library ___________ _ 
Address ___________ _ 
City ____ State __ Zip ___ _ 
□ I am enclosing $10 for each issue. Total __ _ 
□ Please bill the library. 
□ Please send subscription information. 


Epistle from Israel

Adler, Leah

Review of: Maher, Paul. Hebraica Cataloging: A Guide to ALA/LC Romanization and Descriptive Cataloging

Jewish Children's Books Too Good To Miss: Selected List of 1987 Titles 
Association of Jewish Libraries, Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee 
I. Picture Books For the Youngest (K-3) 
**Adler, David. The Number on My Grand-
father's Arm. Photos by Rose Eichenbaum. 
UAHC (Union of American Hebrew Con-
gregations). 
The large clear photos and simple, direct lan-
guage make this publication a moving introduc-
tion to the Holocaust. 
Caseley, Judith. Apple Pie and Onions. 
Greenwillow Books. 
A charming story of Rebecca and her Yiddish-
speaking grandma, and the love and embar-
rassment she feels for her. 
Cohen, Barbara. Even Higher. Illus. by Anatoly 
Ivanov. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. 
A popular story by I. L. Peretz is ably retold with 
bright, colorful illustrations. 
Cooks, Roberta Goldshlag. Gittel and the Bell. 
Illus. by Susan Martz. Kar-Ben Copies. 
Impish Gittel's desire to ring the village bell gets 
her into trouble with the elders of her shtetl. 
DePaola, Tamie. Queen Esther. Harper & Row. 
Beautifully and simply told with bright simple 
pictures by the noted author-illustrator. 
Rosenblum, Richard. My Sister's Wedding. 
Morrow. 
Marrying a soldier-what could be more excit-
ing! The author's charming sketches draw the 
young reader into the simple story of his sister's 
wartime wedding in 1943. 
**Sydney Taylor Book Award winners 
II. Books For Young Readers (Grades 
3-6) 
Chaikin, Miriam. Esther. Illus. by Vera Rosen-
berry. Jewish Publication Society. 
A finely crafted book with delicate line drawings. 
Chaikin, Miriam. Exodus. Illus. by Charles 
Mikolaycak. Holiday House. 
Gloriously illustrated in full color with a poetic 
and complex text. 
Chaikin, Miriam. Yossi Tries to Help God. Illus. 
by Denise Saldutti. Harper & Row. 
The third delightful book about Yossi. 
Citrin, Paul J. Joseph's Wardrobe. Illus. by 
Lindsey Aitken. UAHC. 
This collection of five midrashim, set within a 
tale of marriage and intrigue in King Solomon's 
court, should appeal to those who love adven-
ture stories. 
Cohen, Barbara. The Christmas Revolution. 
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. 
An excellent, enjoyable, and much-needed book 
in which all "December issues" are raised. 
Cohen, Barbara. First Fast. Illus. by Martin 
Lemelman. UAHC. 
A meaningful story of ten-year-old Harry's first 
Yorn Kippur fast. 
Kuskin, Karla. Jerusalem, Shining Still. 
Woodcuts by David Frampton. Harper & Row. 
Appealing to adults and children, the handsome 
tinted woodcuts and serious poetic words out-
line the history of Jerusalem from the time of 
King David until today. 
Schnur, Steven. The Return of Morris 
Schumsky. Illus. by Victor Lazzaro. UAHC. 
Delightful, irrepressible Morris Schumsky adds 
a few unexpected guests to his granddaughter's 
wedding and provides a meaningful twist to a 
special day. 
Wikler, Madeline; Groner, Judyth. Miracle 
Meals: Eight Nights of Food 'n Fun for Cha-
nukah. Illus. by Chari Radin. Kar-Ben Copies. 
Lots of fun and food in this new cookbook. 
168 Judaica Librarianship Vol. 4 No. 2 Spring 1988-Winter 1989 
Ill. Books For Young Adults (Grades 
5-8) 
Fiction 
Gerber, Merrill Joan. Also Known as Sadzia! the 
Belly Dancer! Harper & Row. 
Twelve-year-old girls will love this delightfully up-
beat "growing-up" story. 
**Levitin, Sonia. The Return. Atheneum. 
Teenage Desta tells her story of the exodus from 
Ethiopia to modern Israel. 
Nonfiction 
Drucker, Malka. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda: The Fa-
ther of Modern Hebrew. Lodestar Books. 
Gross, David. A Justice For All the People: Louis 
D. Brandeis. Lodestar Books. 
Krantz, Hazel. Daughter of My People: Henrietta 
Szold and Hadassah. Lodestar Books. 
Three new titles from Lodestar's Jewish Biogra-
phy Series; short but thorough biographies of 
important Jewish figures. 
Kushner, Lawrence. The Book of Miracles. 
UAHC. 
A carefully organized collection of midrashim, 
retold and enhanced with commentary by a 
leading theologian and masterful story-teller. 
Shamir, Ilana, editor. The Young Reader's Ency-
clopedia of Jewish History. Viking-Kestrel. 
An attractive, ambitious volume filled with beau-
tiful and informative color photographs and 
useful maps. 
Shteiner, Puah. Forever My Jerusalem. Feld-
heim. 
This touching memoir of a young child's exile 
from Jerusalem, and her triumphant return as 
an adult in 1967, has garnered much praise. 


Jewish Children's Books Too Good To Miss: Selected List of 1987 Titles

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