Founded in 1892, what is now the National Library of Israel attracts scores of scholars from around the world, not to mention throngs of school children visiting on class trips and crowds of tourists. Liel Leibovitz relates some of the library’s history, describes its recent success at becoming “the coolest place in Jerusalem,” and tells an anecdote about one item in its collections that, in his words, “perfectly captures the charms of the Library”:
The notebook isn’t much to look at, just plain thin sheaths yellowing with age held together by a tattered blue brittle cover, half-torn. Inside, the diligent student wrote carefully, translating words from German to Hebrew, the letters large and round like half-crescents: “Innocent. Suffering. Painful. Disgust. Terrifying. Fragile. Genius.” It’s the sort of vocabulary only Franz Kafka would find indispensable.
The notebook, now one of the many treasures of the National Library of Israel, arrived in Jerusalem courtesy of a teenager named Puah Ben-Tovim. In 1921, Ben-Tovim, fresh out of high school, got a job cataloging German-language books in the Library in Jerusalem, working for its director, the celebrated philosopher Samuel Hugo Bergmann. Ben-Tovim had academic aspirations, and Bergmann suggested that she travel to Prague and stay with his mother while pursuing her graduate degree. In Europe, Ben-Tovim met the young Kafka, a friend of the Bergmann family. He wanted to study Hebrew, not the liturgical kind studied in Europe but the livelier sort spoken in Palestine. Realizing precisely what sort of mind writhed in her student’s skull, Ben-Tovim assigned him a novel by the great Hebrew writer Y.H. Brenner, titled Bereavement and Failure and following the travails of a young and mentally ill man as his life falls apart. Kafka was naturally enthralled, and took to his notebook to memorize the words he found most appealing.
More about: Arts & Culture, Franz Kafka, Israel & Zionism, Israeli society, National Library of Israel
