The National Library of Israel: Home of the Jewish State’s Intellectual Treasures

Feb. 22 2016

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.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Arts & Culture, Franz Kafka, Israel & Zionism, Israeli society, National Library of Israel

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy