The National Library of Israel announced Sunday that it is reverting back to its Israeli-flag-themed logo, after a public outcry that a planned change was detached from both Israel and Zionism.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The fury erupted after the library publicized its new logo last week featuring only the name in black font of the national library in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, replacing the original rendition of a book in the colors of the Israeli flag.

One point of criticism leveled at the library immediately upon its announcement of the planned change was that the Hebrew wording of the new logo only stated "The National Library," as opposed to the "National Library of Israel" as it does in Arabic and English.

Video: The new National Library of Israel premises / Credit:Yaniv Zohar

The library responded, explaining that "first of all, it is our official name.

"In English and Arabic, there are a lot of national libraries across the world," it said, therefore needing the specification of the library belonging to Israel. "While in Hebrew, there is one National Library – ours!"

On Sunday, Education Minister Yoav Kisch sent a letter to the library's director-general, Sallai Meridor, in which he blasted the "lack of any connection and identifiability to the Jewish people, the State of Israel, Zionism or the Hebrew language.

"The Hebrew language is no longer front-and-center," Kisch lamented. "Additionally, the logo that represents the Israeli flag was erased."

It is "unfathomable that the National Library would carry out actions to hurt the public trust in it and derail its ties to the State of Israel," the minister wrote.

Following Kisch's letter, the library released a statement on Facebook in which it said it would revert to the original logo following a "lengthy and important public debate.

"After a period of discussion and considerations in which we listened to the varying opinions and arguments, it was decided that the library would revert to its previous logo," it announced.

The National Library of Israel is set to open in its new, much-expanded facility on Oct. 17, situated between the Knesset and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post National library reverts to old logo after outcry appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The National Library of Israel has recently purchased 90 pages of the first printed edition of one of the most important and influential books on Jewish law – Arba'ah Turim by Yaakov ben Asher, the structure of which was later adopted in the canonical Shulchan Aruch.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Asher, who is estimated to have been born in 1269 and died in 1343, was an influential medieval rabbinic authority. He is often referred to as the Ba'al ha-Turim after his main work.

According to the library, the manuscripts are "incunables," which is a general term that refers to books or pamphlets printed in Europe after the invention of the printing in the mid-15th century press up to the year 1500.

In that time, less than 200 books in Hebrew were printed, some of which did not survive until today. Arba'ah Turim was printed in 1492 by Joshua Soncino, one of the leaders of Hebrew printing in Italy at the time.

No copies of the edition survived in their entirety, only individual pages.

Those acquired by the National Library cover aspects pertinent to the Hebrew calendar, finance, torts, marriage, divorce, and sexual conduct. No such pages are said to be in any other library or private collection in the world.

"Incunables are a rich and unique source for the study of the Hebrew text culture, and they have a museum and bibliographic value as well," Dr. Yoel Finkelman, curator of the Judaica Collection in the National Library, said.

"This is a rare incunable of one of the first printed [Jewish] holy books in the world. And although it did not survive in its entirety, the pages that have been preserved are now safe at the National Library. These pages will be a fertile ground for scholars to learn about one of the most important holy books."

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post National Library of Israel presents rare Jewish manuscript appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

What will we remember about the coronavirus pandemic 10, 50, even 500 years from now? The National Library of Israel wants the answer to that question to be "everything," and has launched an initiative to preserve all the online information about the pandemic for posterity.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter 

Predicting the future is no easy task, but what is certain is that this pandemic – which has affected each and every one of us in terms of health, income, leisure, children, and more – must be documented on behalf of future generations.

The National Library of Israel is calling its new comprehensive initiative "Curating Corona," and has asked the public to "help it in documenting and preserving information, media coverage, large-scale events, public dilemmas and anything that appears interesting or important concerning COVID-19 in the digital arena."

According to the library, "The material that is collected and preserved will include everything – medical information published in the early months of the pandemic; routes traced by the early numbered patients; various dilemmas and arguments for and against lockdowns; debates over vaccines; public and political events influenced by the pandemic – anything that may interest scholars and the general public in two, three or ten generations."

The head of the National Library of Israel's Collection Department, Dr. Raquel Ukeles, said: "Today, when most communication is digital and virtual, the challenge of collection and preservation is bigger and more complex than in the past. Regardless, one of the National Library's central goals is to preserve, document, and make accessible the most significant events in Israeli society and culture, hence we feel it is immensely important to include the public in this initiative."

Click here if you are interested in contributing to the project.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post National Library of Israel to document pandemic for future generations appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Fourteen letters penned in the 1940s by the legendary rabbi known as the "Hazon Ish" have been donated to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem by the family of their recipient, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda, one of the rabbi's students.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The "Hazon Ish" (Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, 1878-1953) is considered to be one of the most influential rabbis of the 20th century. The letters reveal a very personal side to the revered spiritual leader.

In one example relating to Yehuda's decision to join the army and enroll in secular studies, Karelitz responded: "I am rich with love for others, particularly toward you, a young person armed with talents and with an understanding heart. … But when I saw the sudden change in you recently … I had to wait and process my great pain."

Born in what is now Belarus, in 1933 Karelitz moved to what was then British Mandatory Palestine with the help of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi there and a formative figure in the modern religious Zionist movement.

Countless visitors flocked to Karelitz's humble home in Bnei Brak during the last two decades of his life, from simple devout Jews to the leaders of the secular Zionist movement, including Israeli founding father and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, despite the fact that Karelitz was an opponent of Zionism.

A teacher and expert in Jewish law, he left an enduring mark on ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought and culture.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The letters have been donated to the National Library by Yehuda's widow, Hassia, and their children: Rachel Yehuda, Talli Yehuda Rosenbaum and Gil Yehuda.

A free online event celebrating the arrival of the collection will be held on Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. Israel time/1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, moderated by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda's daughter, Professor Rachel Yehuda, vice chair of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post Personal letters by rabbi known as 'Hazon Ish' come to National Library of Israel appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

At the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire set out to recruit new soldiers to join its army, including thousands of young Jewish men who lived in Baghdad.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Instead of sending their men to join the imperial forces, the Jewish community paid authorities to get them exempt. Prominent leader at the time, Rabbi Shelomo Bekhor Ḥutzin, documented the names of everyone who received an exemption.

In the decades to follow, many of those names morphed or disappeared as the Jews living there dispersed across the world. But Hutzin's documents survived and are now stored and are available to the public in The National Library of Israel.

Foreign Ministry diplomat Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch has taken it upon himself to read and translate all 3,500 names on the list.

He has dedicated years of his life to researching Middle Eastern Jewish surnames that have been lost over the generations. Rosen-Koenigsbuch has published lists of family names from Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Alexandria. The four lists have been combined into this searchable database.

Rosen-Koenigsbuch, who used to be an Israeli ambassador to Jordan between 2006 and 2009, began researching Jewish surnames common to the 19th-century Middle East after exploring his family history in Poland.

"My parents were Holocaust survivors," he said. "And they didn't speak. My father was completely silent."

He began lecturing on what he learned from researching his heritage, and audience members kept approaching him to find out about their own family history.

"I would hear this mantra," he said. "We don't know anything about our families because we left Egypt or Syria or Iraq in a hurry. We left everything behind and the archives are closed. We came out alive from those countries, but the documents are not with us. In Europe, most of the Jews were annihilated but the archives are open.'"

Rosen-Koenigsbuch was fluent in Arabic, so he began to research documents from the area, despite limited access to archives. He decided to focus on family names in particular and discovered thousands of them in journals, directories, circumcision records, and court documents.

"There are many limitations, but we have to try to gather the history because we still have among us people in their 70s, early 80s and in 10 years there will be no one to talk to," Rosen-Koenigsbuch said. "If we will not hurry they will be gone. It's a very important message to encourage people to start thinking about this."

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post New project seeks to restore lost Jewish surnames from Arab countries appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

It was created on parchment in the 15th century by Joel ben Simeon, considered by many to be the most important Jewish artist of the Middle Ages.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Ben Simeon was a scribe and illuminator active in Germany and northern Italy. The manuscript is considered exceptional due to the illustrations and illuminations found throughout, including images of rabbits, bears, fish, squirrels and birds, as well as imaginary creations such as a unicorn, and a diverse range of mythological, religious and astrological symbols.

It includes prayers according to the Jewish Roman rite for the entire year, including weekdays, the Sabbath, holidays, Torah readings, the Passover Haggadah, Pirkei Avot ("Ethics of the Fathers") with a commentary by Maimonides, various blessings and legal rulings related to halachah, Jewish law. It is also exceptionally full of piyyutim (Jewish liturgical poetry), selichot (Jewish penitential prayers) and rare formulas of other prayers.

The months-long restoration work on the 376-page volume was extremely complicated, primarily because poor attempts over the centuries to fix its binding had made it difficult to open without causing damage. A number of Latin texts found inside the binding attest to some attempts to strengthen the cover. Many of the manuscript's illustrations had also faded.

The Mahzor was donated to the National Library of Israel in 1970 by Henry and Rose Moskowitz of New York in memory of Henry's parents, first wife, daughter and other relatives murdered in the Holocaust.

According to Yoel Finkelman, head of collections and the Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica collection curator at the National Library of Israel, "For a long time, we unfortunately could not offer physical access to one of the most important and beautiful manuscripts in our collection due to its fragile condition. Now, as a result of the wonderful work done by the team in our Conservation and Restoration Laboratory, the manuscript has been restored and digitized, opening access to the world for the first time."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post 15th-century prayer book fully restored, put online by National Library of Israel appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.