Author Lisa Leff, winner of the 2016 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, offers her thoughts on the significant role played by Jewish research libraries, which she believes serve as "a kind of portal to the past"
An employee of the National Library of Israel sifts through a small fraction of the Library's collections back in 1960, during the long, complicated process of transferring books to the NLI's current location on the Givat Ram Campus. Photo taken by David Harris, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel.
As a Jewish historian, I’ve spent decades traveling across the world to read old and rare Jewish books in the research libraries that house them. Physical books are fragile things, and for people in my profession, there is nothing quite like them. These bundles of paper, sewn or glued together and bound between covers, contain writing that, once deciphered, connects us to voices from the Jewish past in a way that can feel eerily direct. So direct, in fact, that it’s easy to forget that without the librarians who have cared for the books over the years, we would not be able to access the voices they contain.
It used to take some detective work to figure out where a long-out-of-print book might be held. But today, thanks to the massive catalog digitization projects of research libraries such as the National Library of Israel, that information sits at the fingertips of anyone with an internet connection. One thing that remains as mysterious as ever is how books like the ones I pursue– written by Jewish writers centuries ago in Europe– survived through the years. Just as mysterious is the question of why so many of these European books have found their way into the collections of the National Library of Israel and other major Jewish research libraries outside of Europe, far from where they were written and published.
Books and various other treasures confiscated by the Nazis in Ratibor, modern-day Poland. Photo: Yad Vashem
The fact that these books survived at all is truly amazing, given the massive destruction of Jewish life and property by the Nazis and their allies, and the fact that Jewish libraries had been singled out for looting. The books’ survival was no accident. During the Holocaust, Jews in Europe did whatever they could to protect their libraries and archives, sometimes at extreme risk to themselves and their families. This was the case, for example, of the heroic slave laborers of Vilna’s Paper Brigade, who hid precious books from the Nazis to save them. Similarly, in France, the leaders of the Paris Consistory are purported to have protected their archives from Nazi looting by hiding them in the walls of the Rothschild family’s chateau.
Despite these efforts to protect Jewish collections, the Nazis laid their hands on millions of European Jewish books and papers and brought them to Germany. When the Allies stumbled on them at the end of the war and proposed to return only the books whose owners could be easily identified, Jewish cultural activists in New York and Jerusalem were horrified. Knowing the scope of the destruction, they knew such a restitution would be very partial, since so many of the original owners had perished and most of the great Jewish libraries of Europe had been destroyed. Knowing the Allies’ policies, they feared the worst: that these books would remain in Germany, where few Jews remained.
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust, by Lisa Moses Leff, New York : Oxford University Press, 2015
To ensure that Jewish books would be preserved for future use in the new centers of Jewish population, Jewish cultural activists mobilized. On behalf of the Jewish National and University Library (the NLI’s predecessor), Gershom Scholem traveled to Allied-occupied Germany and returned with many rare books and manuscripts. Through Scholem’s work and that of many others, Jewish research libraries today serve as a kind of portal to the past, where contemporary Jewish writers can, in some sense, commune with Jewish writers from bygone centuries through the act of reading old books.
Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem [Hebrew], Am Oved Press, 1982
The Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature shines the spotlight on emerging writers because its founders understand that over the course of their careers, these writers will play a critical role in interpreting and transmitting Jewish culture for new generations. Without libraries like the National Library of Israel, institutions dedicated to the preservation of voices from the Jewish past for use by future generations, Jewish writers could not do this important work.
Together, the National Library of Israel and the Sami Rohr Prize are working to preserve voices from the Jewish past while nurturing talent that will ensure the future of a vibrant, global Jewish literary culture.
The Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the National Library of Israel recently announced a new collaboration that will promote their shared vision to further cultivate a vibrant international Jewish literary culture and community. Read more here.
This Flamboyant New York Jew Amended Black Legal History
Eight Black youths were hastily sentenced to death in 1931 Alabama. Global outcry ensued, and a flamboyant New York Jewish lawyer was sent down to defend them...
The Scottsboro Boys in a pamphlet published by the International Labor Defense, 1931 (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the family of Dr. Maurice Jackson and Laura Ginsburg / Public domain)
From the hobo jungles of the American south to the Yiddish stages of Eastern Europe, news of the affair and the injustice that followed spread quickly.
Two white women of “easy virtue” (in the words of the judge in a subsequent legal proceeding), had claimed to have been raped by a gang of Black teenagers. Following a three-day trial, all but one of the nine defendants were sentenced to death.
The “Scottsboro Boys,” as they came to be known, lacked suitable legal representation. The case was almost completely based on questionable testimonies, with little evidence presented before the all-white jury. Hundreds of angry white locals kept at bay outside the courtroom by National Guard troops had demanded justice, insinuating that they would take matters into their own hands in case the court happened to not reach the “right” conclusion.
Outcry following the death sentences came quickly. Civil and Black rights groups across the United States denounced the trial and its unjust outcome. Justice for the young defendants was quickly adopted as a cause by activists across the globe. Protests were held outside American embassies and consulates abroad.
Protestors on the cover of a pamphlet published by the International Labor Defense, 1931 (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the family of Dr. Maurice Jackson and Laura Ginsburg / Public domain)Demonstrators, including members of the Finnish Workers Club, protesting the death sentence imposed on the Scottsboro Trial defendants, 1931 (The New York Public Library Digital Collections / Public domain)
In the years (and decades) to come, the affair inspired countless works of literature across the racial and geographic spectrum, from Langston Hughes to Yiddish playwright Leib Malach, whose work based on the events debuted in Warsaw in 1935, as the actual case’s legal proceedings were still ongoing. The locally and internationally acclaimed play highlighted the injustices of the American South, resonating with Eastern European Jewish audiences. Even though the real case took place in the neighboring state of Alabama, Malach named his work “Mississippi”.
Soon after the initial verdict in the Scottsboro case, one of America’s most celebrated lawyers – a New York Jew who had never lost a single capital case – would be called in to lead the retrial efforts.
Not yet 40, Samuel Leibowitz was by then one of the most well-known, successful and flamboyant defense attorneys in New York, defending numerous well-known clients including notorious mobster Al Capone.
By late 1932, the International Labor Defense (ILD), a legal organization founded by Clarence Darrow among others, which was associated with the Communist movement, had taken the lead in defending the Black youths. The case was generally seen by the communist leadership as an opportunity to not only achieve justice for the “boys”, but also to secure significant support for communism among Blacks in the United States.
Samuel Leibowitz, however, was not a communist. Before agreeing to defend the Scottsboro Boys alongside the ILD’s general counsel, Joseph Brodsky, Leibowitz demanded that he be allowed to manage the defense without any political interference. He also refused any payment for his services, paying all expenses out of pocket.
He had reviewed the case thoroughly and perhaps out of arrogance or simple naïveté, Leibowitz was convinced that there was no way he could lose.
“… no matter what the prejudice may be, there is a basic rock of decency in every individual… We cannot lose this Scottsboro case. A Chinaman or a Zulu lawyer, barely able to speak pidgin English, must get an acquittal if the evidence at hand is presented to even twelve of the most bigoted, prejudiced creatures that can be corralled into a jury box.”
The fact that Leibowitz was Jewish and brought in by communists certainly did not help his cause – nor that of his clients – once the retrial commenced. His style and bravado were not welcome in northern Alabama. His New York manner and approach were seen as discourteous, not suitable to Southern mores. The courtroom was appalled, for example, when at one point he demanded that the prosecutor address a Black witness as “Mr. Sandford”, rather than simply as “John.”
Leibowitz in the courtroom during the Scottsboro case. He used the trainset behind him to try and discredit the alleged victim’s account of the events. Published in The Forward on April 16, 1933; available via the National Library of Israel Digital Collection
Born in Romania, Leibowitz had immigrated to America with his family when he was four years old and studied law at the prestigious Cornell University. In an April 1933 interview in which he asserted that he was “strictly orthodox” and had had a Passover seder after he returned from the trial, Leibowitz exclaimed that “The snake of anti-Semitism cannot live in the spotlight of public opinion”. He recounted that when someone suggested he change his name to something less Jewish, “I promptly told him to go to hell.” And, in fact, antisemitism played little to no role in Leibowitz’s personal and professional life – until the Scottsboro case.
Prosecutor Wade Wright peppered his arguments with blatant antisemitic language and innuendo. After one of the alleged victims recanted her claim that she’d ever been raped at all, and her new testimony was corroborated by someone named Lester Carter, Wright referred to the man as “Mr. Carterinsky”, describing him as “the prettiest Jew” he had ever seen. Alluding to the traditional Jewish peddler, Wright declared that if Carter “had been with Brodsky another two weeks he would have been down here with a pack on his back a-trying to sell you goods…”
In his closing remarks, Wright asked the jury, “Is justice going to be bought and sold in Alabama with Jew money from New York?”
Leibowitz responded with the following words:
“I am proud of my state. I would die for it just as I would die for my nation. We have as decent people in New York as you have in Alabama. They talk about communists to befuddle you. I’m a Roosevelt Democrat and I served my country when the Stars and Stripes were in jeopardy and when there was no talk of Jew or Gentile, white or black…
And they talk of ‘Jew money from New York.’ I’m not getting a cent for my services, or even for the expenses for myself or my wife down here. I’m not interested in Communism or any other ‘ism’. I’m interested solely in seeing that that poor, moronic colored boy over there and his co-defendants in the other cases, get a square shake of the dice, because I believe, before God, they are the victims of a dastardly frameup…
Let them take me out and hang me. My mission will have been served if I get these unfortunates the same justice that I would seek to achieve for any of you gentlemen if you came to New York and were unjustly accused…”
He called the previous trials “an insult to God himself and a mockery of justice,” and argued that the prosecution was simply “appeal[ing] to prejudice, to sectionalism, to bigotry…”
Before the re-trial started, Brodsky had countered Leibowitz’s confidence, telling him that he would “be a sadder but wiser man” after the trial. And, in fact, Brodsky’s prediction proved more accurate than Leibowitz’s, as the first retrial ended with another guilty verdict and another death sentence.
Leibowitz called it “a black page in the history of American civilization…”
His participation and the involvement of other “outsiders” had not always been welcome, even by the defendants and their families themselves. It was sometimes seen as a distraction or even a hindrance, as the white jury resented the interference of the Northern outsiders. The defendants and their lawyers were surrounded by armed guards, following repeated threats to lynch them.
Yet Leibowitz and his team kept fighting. One of his main initial points of attack – that Blacks had been excluded from serving on the original jury – ultimately helped set an important legal precedent that would ensure Black inclusion on jury rolls across the United States.
The Scottsboro Boys spent years in prison, but thanks to the efforts of Leibowitz and others, they were all ultimately spared the death sentence. In the years and decades that followed, all of the “boys” had their convictions overturned or were pardoned. This included three posthumous pardons granted by the governor of Alabama in 2013, more than two decades after the last of the Scottsboro Boy passed away.
Leibowitz stayed in touch with some of the Scottsboro Boys, even providing personal and professional help and support. In 1937, there were reports that his birthday would be celebrated as a “national” holiday by the American Black community, though that didn’t seem to ever materialize in any notable way. Leibowitz defended a few more high-profile clients and then became a judge, ultimately serving on the New York Supreme Court.
According to Quentin Reynolds’s book, Courtroom, a few years after Leibowitz’s involvement in the Scottsboro trials, he was on vacation in Miami and decided to visit a local courtroom in session. He noticed that there was a single Black man on the jury and when the proceedings recessed, he told the defense attorney that he had a question.
“I’m from the North, and I never knew you allowed Negroes on your juries here in the South. Isn’t that something new?” he asked.
The lawyer bitterly responded, “Yes it is something new. This is the first time in our state we have had a n***er on a jury and it’s all on account of a son-of-a-bitch named Leibowitz from New York. He came down to Alabama a few years ago to try a case and somehow he got to the Supreme Court in Washington, and damned if we haven’t had to put n***ers on our juries ever since.”
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This article has been published as part of Gesher L’Europa, the National Library of Israel’s initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.
“My spiritual home destroyed itself”: Stefan Zweig’s Suicide Note
The letter with which Stefan Zweig took leave of the world is preserved today in the archives of the National Library of Israel
Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881 to a well-to-do Jewish family. As the younger son, Zweig was exempt from the obligation to pursue a traditional, breadwinning profession and, instead, dedicated himself to the art of writing. He wrote poems, novellas, historical biographies, novels, and essays. Zweig traveled extensively throughout Europe and his books were sold in many languages with great success.
His most well-known work, The World of Yesterday, discusses the rise of German populism and the long-term tenure of Vienna’s antisemitic mayor, Karl Lueger. As someone who had experienced these developments first-hand, Zweig understood that this “new,” venomous iteration of politics had paved the way for the rise of the Nazis. He realized that the xenophobia and antisemitic rage that characterized this particular political movement would be exploited and perfected later by the head of the party, Adolf Hitler.
With the ascension of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933, Zweig found himself gradually pushed out of the German-speaking world. In 1938, with the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Zweig moved to England. Upon the outbreak of World War II, he traveled to the United States and visited South America. In 1941 Zweig immigrated to Brazil with his second wife, Charlotte Elizabeth (‘Lotte’).
Zweig viewed Brazil as a land of hope with a bright future. He believed that there was a chance that the values he cherished could flourish there: the unity of the human race, peace, brotherhood among men, and equality among different races. However, as the Nazis advanced their conquest and the war spread to the Atlantic, the ramifications were felt even in South America. Zweig himself felt ever more isolated and grew aware that the European world he knew and loved was lost forever.
On February 22nd 1942, Zweig and his wife, Lotte, were found dead in each other’s arms. The couple committed suicide by taking a lethal dose of pills. Zweig passed first, with Lotte following.
The suicide note, which is kept at the National Library
Before parting from life of my own free will and in my right mind I am impelled to fulfill a last obligation: to give heartfelt thanks to this wonderful land of Brazil which afforded me and my work such kind and hospitable repose. My love for the country increased from day to day, and nowhere else would I have preferred to build up a new existence, the world of my own language having disappeared for me and my spiritual home, Europe, having destroyed itself.
But after one’s sixtieth year unusual powers are needed in order to make another wholly new beginning. Those that I possess have been exhausted by long years of homeless wandering. So I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on earth.
I salute all my friends! May it be granted them to see the dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, go on before.
A 1906 photograph released by the National Library of Israel presents rare visual evidence of the connection between Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon that existed even before the two future Israeli prime ministers were born. It is known that the Begin and Sharon (formerly Sheinerman) families both hailed from Brest-Litovsk, in modern-day Belarus. Sharon’s grandmother was even the midwife at Menachem Begin’s birth.
Yet this photo, which belonged to Sharon’s father, Shmuel Sheinerman, provides perhaps the only extant visual evidence of the historic connection.
Affixed to a piece of cardboard, the photo shows directors and staff of the Loan and Savings Bank in Brest-Litovsk. The bank was founded in 1905 to serve Jews, who suffered discrimination and persecution at that time.
The same year the bank was established, as pogroms against Jews took place across Eastern Europe, the two also worked together as part of the local Jewish defense organization. The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 had led to a national awakening among many Jews in the Russian Empire, including efforts to better organize self-defense organizations like the one in which Sheinerman and Begin took active roles.
Seventy-six years later, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon served together as Israeli prime minister and minister of defense, respectively.
Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, 1978. From the Dan Hadani Archive, part of the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel
More than one million photos documenting Jewish and Israeli life since the mid-19th century are available online through the National Library of Israel.
