The Strange, Dark Journey of a Book of the Zohar

An old, crumbling binding of a 16th-century book of the Zohar was nearly lost to oblivion in the National Library’s archives. A few faint pencil markings on the cover caught the eye of a librarian, revealing surprising secrets about the book it once encased. Join us on a fascinating, almost detective-like journey through the pages and bindings of this remarkable book, uncovering its perilous, winding path before it reached the National Library.

Shifi Rathaus, a conservator in the National Library's Conservation Department, working on another centuries-old book.

This book is so important, that it was a simple and obvious choice for the National Library’s permanent exhibition, where the most precious spiritual and cultural treasures in our collections are displayed. The volume is a copy of one of the first printed editions of the Zohar from 1557. The Hebrew word zohar, meaning “radiance,” reflects the profound spiritual light attributed to this ancient mystical text.

The Zohar is shrouded in mystery, with countless legends woven around it over the years. Written in an enigmatic style, it conveys deep spiritual ideas. The earliest printed editions of the Zohar gathered its scattered texts—previously preserved in numerous manuscripts—into book form, adding to their historical significance.

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The title page of the book of the Zohar from Mantua, featuring the stamp of the Jewish Community Library in Berlin. All photographs in the article (unless otherwise noted): Shifi Rathaus

This specific volume is part of one of the two first Italian editions of the Zohar printed in the 16th century. It comes from the Mantua edition, divided into three volumes. Several copies of this edition are preserved in the Library as part of the impressive Valmadonna Collection, which contains early Hebrew printed works from Italy.

What sets this particular copy apart? We’ll begin with the most obvious details, before revealing the decades-old mystery solved at the very last minute, just before the book’s secret was nearly lost forever…

The layers revealed within the pages of this volume reflect the various transformations experienced by the Jewish People over time. The copy selected for display is the section relating to the biblical Book of Exodus, containing original handwritten annotations by Italian scholars from the 16th century. Prof. Isaiah Tishby [a renowned Kabbalah scholar, recipient of the Israel Prize, and Prof. Gershom Scholem’s first student—Y.A.] attributed the handwritten notes to two rabbis from late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy: Rabbi Moses Zacuto and his student, Rabbi Benjamin Ha-Kohen. Zacuto, a descendant of Portuguese anusim (crypto-Jews), had settled in the Netherlands before relocating to Italy, where he served as the rabbi of the Mantua community.

The fact that this book passed from teacher to student adds a unique dimension to the volume, highlighting the deep respect between them. This teacher-student collaboration also distinguishes this volume from the others, which typically feature handwritten annotations by only a single scholar.

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An example of the handwritten annotations

This volume also bears traces of censorship by the Catholic Church. For example, the word “Edom,” often a veiled reference to Christianity in such texts, has been erased.

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The censor’s erasure of the word “Edom”

The Catholic Church began censoring Jewish texts in the mid-16th century, following the Protestant Reformation. This particular book was censored by Alessandro Scipione, whose name appears prominently in the book, alongside the date of the censorship, 1597. A search of international databases confirmed that Scipione was indeed a Catholic censor active in the late 16th century.

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The signature of the censor, Alessandro Scipione, 1597

Inside the front cover of the book, another clue to its unique journey was revealed: a sticker bearing the inscription, “Jewish Cultural Reconstruction.”

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The sticker on the inner cover: “Jewish Cultural Reconstruction”

This sticker indicates that the book was rescued as part of a project to recover Jewish books looted by the Nazis. These books, at one point considered lost forever, were found and brought to Israel shortly after World War II. The book’s title page also bears a stamp from the Jewish Community Library in Berlin, hinting at its prewar life.

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Like many old books, this volume was in poor condition. The binding was worn and falling apart, and stains covered its pages. Before it could be displayed, it required comprehensive treatment to protect it from further damage and ensure its preservation for future generations.

The task was entrusted to Shifi Rathaus, a conservator in the Library’s Conservation Department. What Rathaus didn’t know when she began working on the book was that its cover held yet another secret.

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One of the first questions Rathaus faced was whether to replace the book’s binding, a complex decision with significant implications. Generally, efforts are made to preserve the original binding, especially if it is authentic. However, in this case, several indications suggested that the binding was not original and had been replaced at a later stage. This conclusion was supported by the style of the binding, the handwriting on the title page that had been partially cut by a guillotine trimmer, and the red edge coloring applied to the trimmed pages, a common practice in later rebinding efforts.

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The book of the Zohar before the conservation process began. The distorted binding is clearly visible.

Moreover, the binding was in such poor condition that it could no longer perform its basic function: holding the quires (bundles of pages) together. Attempting to open the book risked its complete disintegration.

After consulting with her department head, it was decided to replace the binding. Rathaus began the painstaking process, starting with a full photographic documentation of the book’s original condition and a detailed report outlining its damage, the planned treatment, and the materials to be used.

When Rathaus removed the old binding, she uncovered a surprise—a sheet of newspaper from 1906 tucked inside, revealing that the book had been rebound by the Jewish community in Berlin around that time.

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Discovery of a newspaper page inside the inner binding, the page is from a newspaper published in Berlin in 1906.
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Stages of the conservation process

After cleaning the pages using a specialized washing process—performed only after careful assessment to ensure it would not harm the book—the pages were significantly brightened, old adhesive and amateur repairs were removed, and the sheets were dried and flattened under pressure. Tears were repaired, disconnected sections were reconstructed, and the pages were carefully folded back into quires.

Finally, the book was sewn using traditional techniques with strong, flexible linen strips and rebound in a new cover. The entire process took seven months. For Rathaus, it was the largest bookbinding project she had undertaken—over 300 pages. “The day I finished, I felt euphoric,” she said.

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The delicate sewing process. Photo by Katya Chamorovsky

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What became of the old binding? In most cases, bindings without historical significance are archived or discarded. However, while presenting the Zohar at a Library event, Rathaus decided to display the old binding alongside it to illustrate the conservation process.

One of the attendees at the lecture was librarian Daniel Lipson, who, as part of his role, oversees the “Treasures of the Diaspora” project. Through this initiative, tens of thousands of books from the Jewish cultural and intellectual world—stolen by the Nazis and brought to the National Library through extraordinary efforts—were identified and cataloged. “Sometimes, these books are all that remains of an individual, a family, or a Jewish community,” Lipson explains, emphasizing the immense importance of the project.

During the presentation, Lipson noticed something unusual. Written in pencil on the binding were the letters “JC” and the number “13083.” Lipson immediately recognized the mark—it indicated that the book had not only been held by the Nazis at one point, it had also been cataloged and stored in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

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The pencil inscription in the corner of the binding

Lipson explained that, as far as is known today, during the bombings of Berlin in 1943, the Nazis sought a safer location to transfer stolen Jewish books they deemed valuable enough to protect. This is how the books ended up in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, which the Nazis also used as a “model ghetto” to present a facade to the world about the “good conditions” of Jews under their control. Among other facilities, the camp contained a library where professional Jewish librarians “worked.”

The books that the Nazis sought to preserve were cataloged by a group of prisoners. A booklet documenting this effort reveals that among the catalogers were Jewish librarians, historians, linguists, rabbis, and theologians. These catalogers were professionals, as evidenced by the organized index they created, which includes detailed entries for all the books they handled. The cataloging system ranged from JC 3001 (likely shorthand for “Judaica”) to JC 19225. After the war, this index was transferred to the Jewish Museum in Prague, digitized, and is now available for online searches. With a quick search, Lipson located the catalog card for the book in question, labeled as the Zohar From Mantua.

Survivors of Theresienstadt have testified that the work of cataloging and managing the library provided them with a small measure of solace and comfort during unbearable times. They also recounted that many Jews deported from Theresienstadt to extermination camps took with them one or two books on what would be their final journey to an unknown fate.

But this sacred book was spared from destruction. Printed during the early days of Hebrew printing in Italy, it endured a long and arduous journey. Generations of Jews preserved it—sometimes at great personal risk—until they were forced to catalog it for the Nazis’ library. After the war, the book was returned to the Jewish People. Now, following its conservation treatment, it will be proudly displayed in the National Library of Israel.

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The original catalog card, showing the clear notation by the catalogers at the top: JC 13083, the title: Book of Zohar, and the place of publication: “Mantua.”

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Another fragment of the Jewish People’s tumultuous history was uncovered within this book, reminding us of the central role the written word has played in Jewish history throughout the ages. Preserving it provided strength and a sense of purpose to those who cared for it, both in the past and in the present.

When you admire the beautiful volume of the Book of Zohar from its first printed edition, now displayed in the permanent exhibition hall at the National Library, remember that behind it lies an extraordinary story, secrets that were revealed, and countless hours of meticulous work. Its old binding is now also preserved at the National Library in Jerusalem.

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The Book of Zohar after treatment by the Conservation Department

The Boy Whose Life Was Saved by Hannah Senesh

One of the heart-wrenching facts about Hannah Senesh, the paratrooper-poetess who died so tragically at the age of 23, is that she wasn't able carry out her mission. She received military training and was sent to Yugoslavia in an effort to save Jews from the Nazis – but she was ultimately caught at the border, imprisoned, and executed. Was her death in vain? The story of one little boy and his mother reveals something of Hannah's unique personality, as well as those she did manage to save, despite everything.

Hannah Senesh, aged 17 or 18, from the Senesh Family Archive, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, alongside an image of Baruch Galtstein, the boy born thanks to her. Photo courtesy of his family.

On the border between Slovakia and Hungary is a large forest, the kind that brings to mind the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, a forest so thick that when you enter it, the sun disappears, even in the middle of the day.

In 1942, this forest was infiltrated by a small group made up primarily of Jews trying to flee Nazi-occupied Slovakia, where the first train to Auschwitz had just left the station. They were attempting to escape to Hungary, which at the time was still relatively free.

This was not their first attempt; a few days earlier, they had reached the area with the aid of professional smugglers – who promptly betrayed them to soldiers stationed on the border. Most of the group were killed or caught by the Nazis, but under cover of darkness and in the chaos of the moment, some of them managed to run away to temporary safety. Now, they tried again to escape the country.

Among the fugitives were Matilda and Eliezer Galtstein, together with their two-year-old daughter Tova and Matilda’s sister Hilda. Their son Baruch, who would become one of the heroes of the amazing family story he would share with us more than eighty years later, had not yet been born.

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Right: The parents, Eliezer and Matilda, on their wedding day. Left: Tova, aged five. Photo courtesy of the family

This time they managed to make it into the forest before the shooting started, but the darkness and tangled overgrowth turned out to be a double-edged sword: The gunfire forced them to all disperse, and when they later regrouped deep inside the forest, they were horrified to learn that Tova wasn’t with any of them. What were the odds of a small girl, not even three years old, surviving in a terrifying forest, filled with monsters that were all too real?

For three days, they scoured the forest, calling their little daughter’s name, alternately shouting and whispering as they grew more and more desperate. Then, finally, they found her – frightened and exhausted but healthy and whole – waiting for them under one of the trees.

Was this miracle the end of their travails? Not really.

They arrived in Budapest with forged papers, mourning everything and everyone they’d lost and fearing what the future might bring (Matilda and Hilda’s parents had already been sent to Auschwitz and murdered there on the day they arrived). For two years, they lived in relative safety in the city, but then came the day they had feared the most: on March 19, 1944, German forces entered Hungary, bringing with them all the terror and horrors of the Holocaust.

For the sake of their own survival, Eliezer and Matilda decided to temporarily break up their small family. Tova, who was now almost five years old, was handed over to a convent which also served as an orphanage, while Eliezer and Matilda each lived in separate hiding places. Every so often they would meet at a predetermined location in one of the city’s public parks.

One day in July 1944, Matilda did not show up at their meeting place. Eliezer learned later that she’d been arrested a few days earlier. Her forged papers, combined with her broken Hungarian, marked her out as a foreigner trying to hide her own identity and therefore – a suspected spy. She was thrown in prison. Matilda was certain that her fate and that of her unborn child was sealed, but she hadn’t taken into account her new cellmate.

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[Hannah Senesh with her brother Giora (George) in Tel Aviv, shortly before leaving on the mission from which she would not return. Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel]
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Writing behind the picture (above). Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel

The 23-year-old young Jewish woman who welcomed her introduced herself as “Aniko, or Hannah.” She was younger than Matilda, but had spent more time in prison – she’d arrived a month and a half earlier – and had received training for dealing with such situations. She extended a hand to Matilda and quickly became her support.

The woman’s full name, as you’ve already guessed, was Hannah Senesh (Szenes). The talented writer was born in Hungary, made Aliyah to the Land of Israel and then volunteered to serve in the British Army and joined the group of volunteer-paratroopers dropped over Nazi-occupied Europe. On March 15, 1944, she parachuted into Yugoslavia together with Reuven Dafni, Yonah Rosen, and Abba Berdichev.

At first, she joined a local partisan group, but in June it was decided to move forward with her main mission, which was supposed to take place on Hungarian soil. She attempted to cross the border and was caught by Hungarian soldiers. She was then transferred to a Budapest jail, where she was charged with treason against the Hungarian motherland and tortured to reveal the identities of the other paratroopers.

She refused.

Senesh shared her burning faith in the justice of their cause with Matilda, as well as her experience in dealing with Gestapo interrogators. She listened to her, encouraged her, and gave her strength, especially after the endless rounds of torture Matilda endured. She advised her to steal and destroy her forged identification papers, so that the government would have no physical proof against her.

“In the end, it didn’t really change anything,” said Baruch, Matilda’s son, “Lemke (the Gestapo commander in charge of the prison) would always tell her ‘I don’t need this document to execute you, I will execute you, anyway.”

Did Senesh really believe that they would get a fair trial? It’s hard to know, but when Matilda revealed that she was pregnant, it was clear to Senesh that she could not wait for the final outcome of Matilda’s arrest – she needed to escape, and soon.

In Hannah Senesh’s writings, which are mostly preserved in the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel (courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen) – in poems, diaries, and letters – we see the strong relationship she shared with her mother Katherine, but also her special attitude towards motherhood in general:

If there exists in the world a token of honor and respect,
a wreath of loyalty, of love,
there is only one worthy of it:
Your good mother!
Let your heart harbor gratitude,
and let your lips sing a prayer,
Hear now the most beautiful word in the world:
Mother!

(Hannah Senesh, “Mother,” 1933)

“I would like to erect a monument to my mother—a mother who, from my childhood to this day, allowed my brother and me to set sail into the world to seek our own paths, forgoing her right to hold us back. This is not just the image of my mother; many Jewish mothers of our generation share this fate.”

(From Hannah Senesh’s diary, December 14, 1940)

When Senesh explained her escape plan to Matilda, the latter panicked. The route sounded too complex and the odds of success too low. But Senesh insisted and encouraged her to do it – if not for herself, then for the child in her womb.

Was this an escape plan meant for Senesh herself? Was young Hannah, who was far more fit than the pregnant woman living in inhuman conditions, capable of using this route herself? We’ll probably never know, but many believe that she didn’t try to flee since she was certain she would be released – which, as we know, she wasn’t.

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Farewell letter from Hannah Senesh to her mother, likely written on the day of her execution. It was found in the pocket of her dress, which was handed over to her mother. Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel

Matilda followed every stage of the plan, step by step: When they came to take her for interrogation (again), she feigned falling down the stairs. She needed to be precise in her fall – not too hard, so as not to harm her baby, but hard enough to have her sent to the infirmary.

The infirmary was on the third floor of the building. It was much quieter than the rest of the prison and its windows weren’t barred. Matilda waited for the nurse to leave the room. When the coast was clear, she tied some sheets together and carefully climbed down out of the window, down to the street which was still part of war-torn Budapest but still safer than being in Gestapo custody.

Hannah Senesh was executed not long after, on November 7, 1944.

On February 13, 1945, Budapest was liberated by the Red Army. Immediately after being freed, Matilda turned to the convent where she had put the thing most dear to her – her daughter, Tova. She was told they had no such girl.

But by now, Matilda knew a thing or two about how useful windows could be. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she climbed up to the convent’s rear window and forced it open. There, she immediately identified Tova, who in turn recognized her mother. They left together, to meet Eliezer who had been switching between dozens of hiding places in the last few months.

Shortly afterward, Matilda gave birth to her son, Baruch. His body was covered in bruises, a result of the tortures suffered by her mother, but was otherwise healthy. Following his birth, the Galtstein family made Aliyah after much suffering and not a few miracles, where they could finally raise their children in peace and happiness.

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The Galtstein family, at their Ramat Gan apartment. Photo courtesy of the family

The story of the rescue of Matilda and Baruch by Hannah Senesh has accompanied the family for many decades. Senesh became a national hero in Israel after her death, but their connection was personal.

“Mother would tell of it, again and again, to anyone who would only listen,” Baruch said, adding that every year, on the Hebrew anniversary of Hannah’s execution, the 21st of Cheshvan, he would say the kadish prayer for the clever, brave, young woman who saved their lives.

A few years ago, Baruch traveled to Budapest with other relatives to explore the family’s roots in Hungary. They had their picture taken in front of the building which once served as the Gestapo headquarters, where Matilda fled through the window while carrying Baruch in her womb.

Above them was a sign placed there shortly after the war:

“Thousands suffered in this building.

In the dark days of 1944, between March 19 and December 31, they were arrested by the German Gestapo and most were sent to the death camps.

The few who remain alive remember them.

Budapest 1946.”

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The sign on the former Gestapo building in Budapest. Courtesy of the Galtstein family

The Undercover Operation to Rescue the Crown of Damascus

The incredible story of how a priceless Hebrew manuscript written nearly 600 years ago was smuggled out of Syria and eventually brought to the National Library of Israel

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Judy Feld Carr

Had someone predicted decades ago that Judy Feld Carr would help to smuggle an invaluable, centuries-old book out of Syria — to say nothing of delivering thousands of the country’s Jews from a dictatorship to freedom — “I’d tell you you’re mad,” the Toronto resident said in a telephone call in the waning days of 2024. “I taught the music of the Catholic church of the 14th century. If you could tell me how that [leads] to Syria, you’re better than me!”

Feld Carr utilized similarly colorful language when asked whether she has any Syrian heritage.

“Are you kidding? My father was from Russia, my mother was from Brooklyn, Ashkenazi, and I grew up in northern Canada,” she said.

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Judy Feld Carr and the Damascus Keter she helped rescue from Syria, photographed by Orah Buck in Toronto, 1993

Yet Feld Carr, a musicologist by training, became indispensable in facilitating the smuggling of the book, an artistic Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, from Syria to Canada and on to Israel in 1993.

This particular book was originally written in Italy in the 15th century. It was transferred to Spain shortly afterwards, but after the edict of expulsion the book made its way to the Ottoman Empire. It was sold among the communities of Jewish exiles and eventually ended up in Damascus.

It is one of twelve Hebrew manuscripts that have come to be known as the Damascus Keters. Today the Keters are part of the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition, “A Treasury of Words,” where culturally priceless works reside. The word keter is Hebrew for “crown.”

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The Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue

Feld Carr first learned of the Damascus Keter in July 1993 while in Jerusalem with her husband, Don Carr — the couple had an apartment in the city — when they met a curator at the Israel Museum as the renowned Aleppo Codex was being restored.

The curator asked Feld Carr if she knew about the Damascus Keter or had any ideas for getting it out of Syria. Feld Carr called Shlomo Gal, a senior Mossad official, at his home on a Friday afternoon. He berated her, urging her instead to continue bringing Syrian Jews to freedom. (Harold Troper’s 2007 book about her, The Rescuer: The Amazing True Story of How One Woman Helped Save the Jews of Syria, can also be found at the National Library.)

Feld Carr recalled that she heard “from my underground sources” that the Keter resided in a shul in Damascus. That launched her quest to bring it out of Syria, since she understood that the Jewish community there would soon be almost non-existent. “The issue was to find it and get it out. My husband said, ‘You’re crazy. How can you get it?’ That was July. In September, I had it,” Feld Carr said.

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A page from the Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue

How did she do it? During two phone calls and subsequent e-mails, Feld Carr provided few names or details, but did say she worked her contacts in Canada’s foreign ministry and communicated with the Damascus Jewish community’s chief rabbi, Avraham Hamra. Feld Carr said she “paid nothing to anybody to get out the Keter.”

A Middle East specialist in the Canadian government agreed to be the conduit, she said. On a visit to Damascus, he passed Hamra on a street. Hamra surreptitiously handed off the Keter, and the man put it in his raincoat and continued on. The man then visited at least one other Arab country before returning to Canada, the Keter resting in a black shopping bag. Feld Carr went in November to Ottawa, where they met in the man’s office and then headed to lunch.

That’s when Feld Carr first saw the book and held it. It seemed too modest to be the heralded Keter. “I showed disappointment,” she conceded. “ ‘This is what it is?’ It was small” — about 11”x14” — “on the thinnest vellum paper.”

She went on to the Israeli embassy to see Itzhak Shelef, the ambassador. She didn’t have an appointment. He held the book and “was sobbing like a baby,” she recalled. “He said, ‘This may be the Damascus Keter.’”

Feld Carr flew back to Toronto and asked a photographer to come to her home to take pictures of the Keter — without a flash, outdoors. She mailed the photographs to the Israel Museum. After Gal saw the pictures, he “sent me a lovely written message that it was the Keter,” she said.

Hamra, on a visit to Toronto, visited Feld Carr. She gave him the Keter and urged him to donate it to the National Library when he moved to Israel in 1994, which he did.

The text of this particular keter is arranged in two columns, each with 36 lines. It features quadratic Sephardic script, with the text of the Masorah arranged in beautiful geometric patterns around the biblical text.

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A page from the Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue

Interestingly, the Book of Esther is known here as the Book of Ahasuerus, named after the Persian king featured in the story (Xerxes, אחשורוש).

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The Book of Ahasuerus, instead of the Book of Esther

Hamra later sought to retrieve the Keter and took the case to court in Israel, but the decision in 2020 went in favor of the NLI. The dispute led Hamra to cut off contact with Feld Carr. Hamra died in 2021.

“He was like a brother — that’s how close we were,” she said. “I lost his friendship.”

Feld Carr said she has no regrets.

“The Keter is here for eternity, in terms of Jewish life,” she said. “The book is where it should be. It has to be in the library.”

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Another one of the twelve Damascus Keters, currently on display as part of the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition – “A Treasury of Words

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected].

October 7, Mariampol, and Me: Living in the Shadow of Trauma

When Sharon Taylor first heard the term “intergenerational trauma,” she was oddly filled with a sense of relief - finally, a phrase that could describe the familiar anxiety that had always been there. Here, she shares some of her own family history, the kind of history that is familiar to many of us.

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Jews being deported from their homes during the First World War, 1914-1915, the National Library of Israel collections

On October 7, 8, and 9, I mostly sat in front of the television. In my pajamas. Safe in my suburban American home, the horrific images were painful to watch. Still, I couldn’t move. I needed to bear witness, to see so that I could tell. And throughout those three agonizing days, I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling about the viciousness and gleeful display of barbarity. None of this is new. I’ve been here before.

A couple of years ago, I first heard the term “intergenerational trauma,” a mental health condition where the shadow of extreme trauma is passed down through the generations. I know this sounds odd, but a sense of relief washed over me, and I dashed to my computer to investigate its full meaning. Finally, a name for these nebulous feelings of anxiety and vulnerability that are so easily triggered. But where did it start?

As an adult, I’ve felt compelled to uncover my family’s almost lost stories, particularly, the stories of the strong women who changed our family’s destiny. Research is my time machine, transporting me into the past to walk along the paths my ancestors traveled. As a Jew, most of the time it’s a dark journey.

All four of my grandparents were naturalized Americans before the start of World War II. But there was something in the shadows of our history, the faces missing at our Passover Seders, faces that belonged to my grandparents’ siblings and their children, great-aunts, uncles, and cousins murdered by the Nazis. The trauma cut so deep that their names were never mentioned. I’m still looking for the names of many of my family’s Holocaust victims, but this search led me to an earlier trauma. Its similarity to October 7 is striking.

According to the family tale, between 1913 and 1921, my maternal grandmother’s sister Dora brought our family to America. None of my maternal grandmother’s immediate family died in the Holocaust. No trauma there.

That’s what I thought. In the beginning.

Digging deeper into the history of Austrian Galicia and Mariampol, the little town where they lived, (known today as Mariyampil, Ukraine), I discovered that my family’s final years in Mariampol were defined by almost constant violence. Winston Churchill dubbed the First World War’s Eastern Front, “The Unknown War.” Before starting my research, it was certainly unknown to me. And yet, somehow, the trauma experienced by my family at that time lives within me, as integral to me as my sense of taste or smell.

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An Austro-Hungarian cavalry force moves through a town in Eastern Europe during the First World War. The National Library of Israel collections

Researchers are just beginning to explore how what happened, and what didn’t happen, during and immediately after the First World War, became the foundation for the destruction of European Jewry during the Shoah a generation later.

My ancestral shtetl Mariampol had the misfortune to be situated on the front lines during much of World War One. Shortly after the Russian invasion of Austrian Galicia started, on September 9, 1914, London’s Daily Telegraph reported, under the headline “Murderous Girdle of Fire,” that Russian General Brousilloff’s army “completely defeated the Austrians . . . at Mariampol . . .” My great-grandmother Hudia survived the “Murderous Girdle of Fire” in Mariampol. Like the other members of my family that survived the war in Mariampol, her wounds were on the inside. For the rest of her life, she was terrified during thunderstorms.

We know from recent news what Russian bombardment and occupation looks like. Destroyed towns, slaughtered civilians, abducted children, followed by starvation, and during World War I, there was also cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery.

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Jews being deported from their homes during the First World War, 1914-1915, the National Library of Israel collections

It was even worse for the Jews. Added to this litany of suffering, homes and businesses were looted and burned, and Jews across the region were murdered, and subjected to torture, and rape.

To understand my family story, I began searching for histories and first-hand accounts of what happened in Jewish communities surrounding Mariampol. My search revealed a history of mass suffering that looked a lot like October 7.

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The Jewish cemetery in Buchach, photographed in 1995 by Boris Khaimovich, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, digitally available on the NLI website

Ethnographer S. Ansky traveled the area as an aid worker. He recorded in his diary how he was told that in the nearby town of Buchach, 40 “girls” were raped. In Burshtyn, 19 miles northwest of Mariampol, one source records that “…women were raped in the presence of their husbands, parents, and children.” When the Russian Army finished their looting, murdering, and raping, they typically burned the town’s marketplace and Jewish homes. In Buchach, Russian soldiers let the Jewish section of the town burn for three weeks.

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The market square in Buchach, photographed in 1995 by Boris Khaimovich, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, digitally available on the NLI website

In Tlumach, the Russian army rounded up all Jewish males between the ages of 10 and 70. They were marched out of town and on the first night, were forced to surrender their clothing to keep them from escaping. After marching over 90 miles under Cossack whips and rifle butts, the men were forced to dig trenches for the Russian army.

Like in nearby Tlumach, my great-grandmother Hudia’s nine-year-old son, Nathan, was taken captive by the Russians. The family sat Shiva for Nathan and continued to mourn him for the next three years. Nathan’s return to Mariampol three years after his abduction was remembered as a miracle. His return was announced when a neighbor ran up to the family’s doorway shouting in Yiddish, “There’s a red-headed soldier coming up the road.” Did I mention that my grandmother’s brother Nathan had red hair? October 7, children in captivity, and Mariampol collide, the painful past and the painful present swirling within me.

Maryampoler Sick And Benevolent Association 1930
The Maryampoler Sick and Benevolent Association helped support the town of Mariampol following the First World War. This photo of the association’s 30th anniversary event was taken in Brooklyn in 1930. The author’s relatives are seated on the left, behind the sign for table 3, including her great-grandmother Hudia, who can be seen on the far left. Photo courtesy of Sharon Taylor

Looting, torturing, murdering, raping, burning, and taking captives was more than just war. As we witnessed on October 7, this was intended to inflict the maximum amount of pain and humiliation on a specific group of people, my people. As in most pogroms, no one came to rescue the Jews, and no one was punished. The war and the brutality directed at the Jews simply rolled on.

In 1915, the battlefield returned to my ancestral town, and in fierce fighting, Germany took control of Mariampol for its ally, Austria-Hungary. The victory was short-lived. The following summer, Russian Cossacks attacked and once again occupied Mariampol. Cossacks and Jews in the same sentence is almost never good.

This isn’t “Intro to World History.” This is my history, suffering passed down from one generation to the next. It is wrapped around my chromosomes and expressed in every aspect of my life, in how I think, and in how I feel.

World War One ended in November of 1918 and was optimistically dubbed “The War to End All Wars.” It was a hopeful time. But for my family still in Mariampol, the suffering continued. In December of 1918, a leading Jewish aid organization sent a desperate “Cablegram” to its headquarters in New York, “Tenthousand [sic] war orphans are left penniless . . .” In Grodno, Poland, aid workers resorted to creating clothes for orphans from donated flour sacks.

Fighting continued as Poland, Ukraine, and the Soviets battled for control of Galicia, the region that had been the easternmost province of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s hard to imagine, but during the conflicts that followed World War One, the suffering of the region’s Jews intensified.

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The ruins of the Great Synagogue in Brody, Eastern Galicia, photographed in 2011 by Vladimir Levin, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, digitally available on the NLI website

By this time, many of the region’s Jewish towns were struggling to survive. Synagogues, study houses, Jewish schools, and mikvehs had been desecrated or destroyed in the war. People were living in cellars, or in the few structures that escaped the shelling, the looting, and the fires. Jews in the affected towns were totally dependent on foreign aid to survive. This included Mariampol. And things were about to get worse.

In September of 1920, Ukrainian hetman Symon Petliura and his militias passed through Mariampol during their struggle to create an independent Ukraine. Pinkas Hakehillot Polin, published by Yad Vashem, describes what happened in Mariampol that September: “. . . four Jews were murdered, including a pregnant woman, and 16 were injured. The hooligans raped four women and five girls (including two young girls) . . .The Jewish town did not recover from its destruction…” My family was there, and the wounded, raped and murdered were their
friends, neighbors and relatives.

Mariampol wasn’t the only town decimated by Petliura’s militias. In her book, Gendered Violence: Jewish Women in the Pogroms of 1917 to 1921, academician Irina Astashkevich, used the term “carnival of violence” to describe the intentionally public cruelty, and unbridled viciousness of what happened in Jewish communities across Ukraine at that time. In those pogroms, as in most of the pogroms that our European ancestors experienced, no one was punished. The perpetrators brushed themselves off, had a good laugh, and went on with their lives as our ancestors wrapped their wounds and buried their dead. And the women who were raped? In keeping with the mores of the time, they kept their mouths shut and their anguish to themselves.

A short time later, after witnessing that no one came to the aid of Europe’s Jews and that there weren’t any consequences for the perpetrators of the World War One era pogroms, the Nazis replicated their murder and barbarity on an industrial scale.

This brings us back to intergenerational trauma, to wounds on the inside that can be passed down through the generations. The pogrom in Mariampol that my great-grandmother Hudia experienced in 1920 looked a lot like October 7. That day, which should have been a joyous celebration of Simchat Torah, I sat paralyzed in my pajamas in front of my television.

And I was also in Mariampol, watching the carnival of violence, live and in color in my living room. I wasn’t alone. Instead of dancing with the Torah in synagogue, Jews around the world were thrown back into their own Mariampols, watching the carnival of violence with me.