She had no soldiers, weapons, or military rank. She did have a pen, a typewriter, excellent connections, and an inexhaustible determination. That was how this Jewish lawyer from Casablanca became the woman who provided thousands of refugees with food, shelter, and, above all, the piece of paper that could save their lives.
Forgive, Don’t Forget: A History of Jewish Forgiveness
Today, we live in a world in which asking for and receiving forgiveness – even without any significant price to pay – is accepted, natural, and almost taken for granted. But is this gift really inevitable? A look at some of the earliest instances of wrongs and sins being forgiven in Jewish history can teach us a great deal about the nature of forgiveness, and about its delicate place along the vast spectrum between forgetting and punishment.
Siri Hustvedt’s Private New York Trilogy
Three separate entities, each with a life of its own: Siri Hustvedt. Paul Auster. And “the thing that existed between them.” For more than forty years, they lived in the same house, wrote on separate floors, edited each other’s work, argued over the arrangement of their library, grappled with a vast disparity in their public profiles, and together endured family tragedies and terminal illness. This is the story of a woman with a singular voice, on writing, love, and parting.
The Articella: The “Little Art” That Changed the World of Medicine Forever
Is it possible that we at the National Library of Israel, have discovered the book with the most misleading title in the world? “The Articella,” translates to “little art” in Latin, but it was in its time, one of the most important collections of scientific literature in the world. Its contents were remarkably cosmopolitan and anything but small.
So, who was the Jewish scholar whose work occupies a significant portion of the manuscript – and who was accused of plagiarizing him? A new exhibition at the National Library of Israel offers a rare opportunity to get a glimpse of this nearly 800-year-old manuscript, preserved in the Library’s collections.
Love in Moominvalley: The Hidden Life of Tove Jansson
Beloved children’s author, acclaimed painter, or queer icon? The Finnish Tove Jansson, never chose one part of her life over the others. Instead, she created a world of her own – one in which all of them coexisted peacefully side by side.
More Than a Traveler: Marco Polo
Sometimes, just reaching the farthest corners of the known world and spending nearly twenty years journeying through lands that almost no one back home has ever seen is not enough. In order to have your name remembered centuries later, something more is needed… Someone has to tell the world your story.
The Story of the Destruction
What do we mean when we speak of the Destruction of the Temple? For most of us, the phrase evokes the destruction of the Second Temple – the catastrophe that ushered in nearly two thousand years of exile and is documented in relatively abundant historical sources. Yet Jerusalem had already known devastation long before then, and the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av) was established as a day of mourning and fasting centuries earlier.
So, what led to the destruction of the First Temple?
A Ballerina in Auschwitz: Dr. Edith Eger’s Choice
The many obituaries published about her around the world focused on the horrific moment that became inseparable from her public story: dancing before Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. But the life of Edith Eger, who began as an anonymous Jewish girl in Hungary and became a celebrated psychologist in the United States, was infinitely larger than any headline. It is an extraordinary and deeply moving story of courage, faith, wisdom, and unyielding resilience.
Grandfather Mehdi’s Camera: A Rare Glimpse Into Jewish Life in Iran
When the Frarouy family set out on their perilous journey to Israel, they packed a single item in their suitcase, one that, nearly forty years later, offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the everyday life of a family and a community whose world was overturned overnight.
Maimonides, the Christian Artist, and the Censor: The Story of a Revolutionary Manuscript
Cairo, Provence, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Jerusalem: a long and winding journey was taken by the extraordinarily beautiful manuscript now displayed in the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition in Jerusalem. This is the story of one of the rarest, and likely the most magnificent, copies of “Mishneh Torah” by Maimonides, among the most important works in the Jewish literary canon, and one that received dazzling and highly unconventional artistic treatment.
