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Vilna’s Jewish Public Library and Its Post-Holocaust Fate

Nov. 17 2015

Like his father Shmuel, Matisyahu Strashun (1817-1885) was a successful businessman and an accomplished talmudic scholar, as well as a prominent member of Vilna’s Jewish community. He also participated in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), then in its heyday in Eastern Europe. In his lifetime, he amassed one of the world’s most extensive Judaica libraries. After his death, the collection took on a life of its own. Dan Rabinowitz writes:

At the time of his death, [Strashun had] amassed a collection of over 5,700 books and manuscripts. His collection included incunabula, rare and controversial works, and manuscripts. . . . Strashun’s collection included rabbinic and Haskalah works, and books in non-Hebrew languages.

At his death in 1885, Strashun left no direct heirs. He did, however, provide for the disposition of his library in his will. In the past, those with large libraries had sold [them] or left [them] to relatives; Strashun [instead] bequeathed his library to the Vilna Jewish community writ large, with instructions to establish a . . . public library. His vision for the library was modeled on “the non-Jewish libraries that he saw in the Diaspora.” To that end, Strashun provided not only the books but also the funds to support the creation and maintenance of the library. . . .

[In the early 20th century], many Vilna scholars donated their collections to the library, and, by the 1930s, [it] had grown to over 35,000 volumes.

In the aftermath of World War II, during which the Nazis had looted the library and removed some of its books to Frankfurt, many of its remaining holdings found a home at the YIVO Institute in New York.

Read more at Seforim

More about: Books, Haskalah, History & Ideas, Holocaust, Vilna

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic