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CHANUKA EDITION, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1961
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JEWISH BOOK MONTH FEATURE;
As the final selection in our 1964.Jewish, BooJk Month Bulletin Series we are pleaded to present this fine article, written by Marvin Lowenthal, one of the foremost Jewish writers today, on the subject of a community Jewish library. It presents fascinating picture of past libraries and discusses the features and contributions of a modern Jewish library—one of the size already recommended by the Bulletin in Editorial Topic last November 10 issue. Mr. Lowenthal echoes our food for thought on a eommunal library and offers stimulating reading in so doing. This article first appeared over a year ago in the Jewish Ploridian^The i:ditors.
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By MARVIN LOWENTHAL
Whenever a Jewish community opens for general use a room full of pertinent books, it constitutes the latest link in the long chain of Jewish libraries, public and private, which stretches back to a misty and dateless antiquity. No one any longer knows the nature or the precise origin of the first Jewish, or, better said, Hebrew library. Ancient Israel arose in a highly civilized region; and libraries are i indispensable to civilization. Vast collections of books, written to be sure on clay rather than paper, have survived from the libraries of Nineveh and Babylon —^collections whose earliest material, whose first editions, date from nearly five thousand years ago.
Of Israel itself, only hint« ar« left us. There was a city in the territory of Judah, originally a Canaanite city, which Joshua calls Kiriat-Sefer, that is, Book-Town—a name later changed to
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Debir, itself perhaps related to the Het?rew term for "word." When the prophet Samuel wrote a book on the character of the kingdom which the Israelites insisted upon adopting, he "laid" the book "up before the Lord"— that is to say, he put it into the safekeeping of a sacred, priestly library—possibly at Shiloh. To put a book in a sacred shrine was a way of preserving not only the document itself but the integrity of its text. The Greeks often employed the same safeguards; it was th ancient equivalent of taking out a copyright.
There must have been a library, a collection of archives at least, jis the celebi-atied First Temple at Jerusalem. It was not any too well run—or so circum-stancial evidence would imply. During the 18th year of his reign mi B.C.E.),King Josiah ordered the Temple to undergo necessary repairs, While the repairs were in progress, probably in the stackroom, a book was discovered which had long been lost to sight and mind. Tradition holds that it was the Book of the Law, or the Torah; modern scholarship identifies it as the presumably newly written Book of Deuteronomy.
The first individual Jew credited with the creation of a public library was Nehemiah.one of the hap^y few who led in the restpration Of Jeriisalm after the return trpm the Babylonian captivity. The Second Book.of the Maccabees tells how Nehemiah "founding a; library, gathered together the acts of the kings and the prophets, and of David, and the epistles of the kings concerning the hoiy, gifts" (2:13). Certainly the compilers of the two Books of Chromcles> tiie last historical writings: included in the canonical Hebrew Scriptures, had at th^r disposal a rather ex-: tensive library^|)ossibly the one founded by Neiieihiah: The contents incliide<|: all now contained^ih this Hebre^ ble, except, of; course, -foi:^ such" miscellahec^us Workis Vere hot yet written.;;ttjalso^ include!* a: -goodly rti^bfei^- 0^^^^ books, cited %hd iomietijrxi^ tantd^
whieh= atier: 1(^
2h -of th^;. vanji^ed^; ^treasuijesr;
A Hbrary
were placed under what librarians today call restricted circulation: in this instance they were issued only to such readers "as" be wise among the people." But the account smacks more of Tal-mudic midrash than of fact.
When the Talmud was in the process of composition — during the first two centuries before and after the start of the Com mon Era—the rabbinical schools had at their command, among m,o r e conventional material what might be termed a talking book. For a long while the rabbis were loath to commit to writing their prime source of material, the Mishnah or Oral Law, which was the basic subject of their studies, commentaries, opinions and arguments. Writing down the Oral Law, they felt, might impair the authoritative quality which came from its being par excellence the "unwritten" law.
They were also afraid that scribes, who coiild hot be check ed up on the spot and at once, might be led into making editori-
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al changes or else what we know today as typographical errors. So they trained a band of young men, usually not bright enough to think of anything divergent to learn the Mishnah by heart; and when an assembly of scholars wished to refer to this or that original Mishnah text, about which there might be some dispute as to how it ran, one of these young men would reel it off verbatim. These human parrots had powerful, well-developed memories and not too much intelligence. Curiously enough, our ultra-modern libraries are resorting to this old Talmudic method, though for a different purpose; we have transformed
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: ; iioiiM ^mebbdy at^ somife: time or another^ ntust ha rowed thes? fascinating ^books^ and as borrowers will, ^isapp^r^ ed with theni: into oblivitoh; What says Ben Sirach? "Many persons when a thing is .lent to them,, reckon it: to be sometliing they found.".. , V-:/ -
Yet, despite the depredations of borrowers, .books multiplied and libraries ^rew. fCbheleth has an immortal word on this pr6-.j liferation: "Of making many books there is no end." Probably the speediest and most copious output in the annals of the ancient publication trade is I'ecorded in the Second Book of Esdras (14:44); in forty days five men under the dictation of Ezra wrote down 20.4 different books composed on the spot. The last seventy of them incidentally
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