National Library of Israel

The library's national mandate embraces both Israel and Jewish communities worldwide: its statutory purpose is to collect, preserve, cultivate, and transmit knowledge, heritage, and culture, with particular emphasis on the Land of Israel, the State of Israel, and the Jewish people.[6] Its responsibilities extend beyond published books to archives, manuscripts, maps, music, audiovisual recordings, and electronic materials of unique national, historical, or cultural significance.[4] Public access, research services, preservation, exhibitions, and education are all part of that mandate.[2][7]

For more than six decades in its former Givat Ram home, the institution combined three roles: Israel's national library, the national library of the Jewish people, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's central research library in Israel Studies, Jewish Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, and the general humanities.[1] Its holdings include one of the world's most significant Hebraica and Judaica collections, together with a leading collection of Yiddish printed books, newspapers, and music.[6] The library also maintains substantial collections concerning Islam, the Middle East, and other fields.[7]

The present building stands in Jerusalem's National Quarter, at the junction of Kaplan Street and Ruppin Road, opposite the Knesset and near the Israel Museum.[8] Its location places it among national government and cultural institutions while remaining near the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus.[2] The building was designed to accommodate not only scholarly research but also exhibitions, public events, and educational activity, with public areas at entrance level and a central atrium overlooking automated stacks.[5]

A proposal for a central library in Jerusalem appeared in 1872, when Rabbi Abraham Heschel Levine Volozin published “A Call” in the journal Habazeleth.[9] Other early initiatives included Israel Dov Frumkin's Montefiore Library and Eliezer Ben Yehudah's effort to establish a library as a secular center.[10] These projects formed part of the development of the modern Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel, alongside the subsequent efforts of B'nai B'rith and the Abravanel Library.[10]

The institution traces its founding to 1892, when B'nai B'rith opened the Midrash Abarbanel Library in Jerusalem with a mandate to collect “the treasures of Jewish literature.”[9] It was Jerusalem's first free public library and quickly became a cultural center of the yishuv.[9] Physician and Zionist activist Joseph Chasanowich played an important role in expanding it: in 1895, he donated thousands of books from Bialystok, substantially enlarging the collection.[1] His conception of a national library extended to works by Jewish writers across different languages and literatures, and the 1905 World Zionist Congress subsequently decided to establish a Jewish national library.[11]

Chasanowich's involvement began before that large transfer: he met B'nai B'rith members in 1890 and sent an early contribution of 240 books to the Midrash Abarbanel Library, which had been initiated by Mordechai Edelman and B'nai B'rith members.[12] He continued acquiring books and eventually purchased approximately 20,000.[12] The Jewish Review of Books recounts that his 1899 vision called for Hebrew books, works in other languages about Jews and their teachings, and writings and art related to Jewish life; it places the Judaica collection already assembled in Jerusalem at more than 15,000 books.[13]

By 1920, when the Zionist organization took over the library, its holdings had reached approximately 30,000 volumes.[1] Samuel Hugo Bergman, its first academic director, led the institution from 1920 to 1935, during which its holdings grew to 300,000 volumes.[10][1] Plans drawn up in 1920 envisioned the B'nai B'rith collection as the foundation of a university library.[11] When the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was established in 1925, the library moved to its Mount Scopus campus and became the Jewish National and University Library, expanding both its mission and its collections.[9]

The Mount Scopus library was installed in the Wolffsohn building in 1930.[1] Under Gotthold Weil, who led it from 1936 to 1946, approximately 150,000 books were added.[1] By 1948, the library held nearly half a million books, but the War of Independence cut communications between Mount Scopus and western Jerusalem.[1] Books were removed from the isolated campus and dispersed among buildings elsewhere in the city, while the institution retained its position as the central national collection.[9]

Curt Wormann, appointed librarian only months before the 1948 crisis, had to rebuild services in western Jerusalem, where the library operated in the Terra Sancta building.[1] Support from people in Israel and abroad enabled it to obtain tens of thousands of books and return to working condition.[1] Following a 1958 agreement with the Jordanian government, mediated by United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, approximately 350,000 books were gradually transferred from Mount Scopus to the Israeli-held sector of Jerusalem.[1]

Postwar recovery of Jewish cultural property also shaped the collections.[1] In the years after World War II, the Hebrew University, later joined by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, salvaged hundreds of thousands of books and hundreds of manuscripts, chiefly Hebraica and Judaica, from Jewish public and private libraries looted by the Nazis.[1] Some entered the National Library, while others were distributed to university, public, synagogue, and yeshivah libraries throughout the country.[1] Library staff also handled shipments from libraries that had survived the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.[12]

In November 1960, the library moved into the newly dedicated Lady Davis Building on the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus, where it remained for more than 60 years.[9] At the beginning of 1968, it held approximately 1.5 million volumes, more than a quarter of them Hebraica and Judaica, together with 6,100 Hebrew manuscripts and 800 manuscripts in other languages.[1] The Institute of Microfilms of Hebrew Manuscripts moved to the library in 1962; through 1971, it acquired 25,000 photocopies of Hebrew manuscripts from 18 countries and thousands of photographs of genizah fragments.[1]

Institutional restructuring followed recommendations from an international advisory committee convened in 1998 and the Zamir Committee's conclusions, published in 2004.[4] The Knesset adopted the National Library Law in 2007, establishing the institution under the name National Library of Israel and expanding its responsibilities for documenting Israel's cultural oeuvre.[4] The law granted it independent legal status effective January 1, 2011.[4] Its legal framework made it a public-benefit company, with ownership divided between the state, the Hebrew University, and other bodies.[14]

The relocation project was linked to broadening physical and digital public access.[15] After humanities and social-science faculties left Givat Ram in the early 1970s, the library remained in a campus environment that its leadership later considered less suited to serving a broad public.[15] An agreement allowed continued use of the former building until 2033.[15] The new library opened to the public on October 29, 2023, during the war that began that month, without the planned celebratory events; some spaces opened while construction and design work were still continuing.[5][2]

The collections are organized around Judaism, Israel, Islam and the Middle East, the humanities, and music.[3] Named specialist collections include rare books, maps, United Nations publications, manuscripts, personal archives, and music and sound.[16] The collecting mission encompasses material published in Israel in any language; publications from anywhere concerning Israel, the Land of Israel, Judaism, or the Jewish people; and material in Hebrew or Jewish Diaspora languages, including Yiddish and Ladino.[17]

The 2025 annual-review material lists 16,000 Hebrew-letter manuscripts, 2,700 Arabic-letter manuscripts, 1,600 personal archives, 14,200 original and digital maps, 2.5 million digitized photographs, and 13 million digital pages of historical Jewish and contemporary press.[18] The homepage separately presents 4.5 million books, 2.5 million photographs, 106,141 entries under newspapers, and 14,191 under “Piyutim & Tefillot.”[3] These holdings span printed, handwritten, photographic, recorded, and digital forms rather than a single type of research material.[3][18]

Special collections include Zalman Schocken's Hebrew incunabula; Ignaz Goldziher's Orientalia, especially Islamica and Arabica; Harry Friedenwald's materials concerning Jews in medicine; and Abraham Schwadron's Jewish autographs and portraits.[1] Other collections are associated with Immanuel Loew and A. S. Yahuda.[1] Manuscript holdings encompass Jewish and non-Jewish materials from around the world, including illuminated and non-illuminated biblical manuscripts.[1] Featured online material includes four illuminated Hebrew manuscripts produced in Germany and Italy around 1300–1500: a medieval Bible, prayer books, and a manuscript of Jewish law.[3]

Personal archives represent writers, scholars, and public figures, including Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber, Joseph Klausner, Stefan Zweig, S. J. Agnon, Itzik Manger, Uri Zevi Greenberg, S. Yizhar, and A. B. Yehoshua.[1] The library also houses the Albert Einstein archive, while other named archival holdings include Natan Sharansky and Naomi Shemer.[1][19] Handwritten works by Maimonides and Isaac Newton, Islamic manuscripts dating to the ninth century, and maps of Jerusalem and the Holy Land extend the collections' chronological and disciplinary range.[19] A 2023 account identified 7,500 pages in Newton's handwriting among the holdings.[7]

The Rabbi Sacks Legacy reports that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's personal archive arrived in April 2024.[20] It describes handwritten notes and typed texts for sermons, lectures, articles, and books, together with media columns, correspondence, research material, photographs, and other items.[20] At the time of its account, the online catalogue listing was nearly complete and at least half the archive had been digitized.[20]

International cooperation has expanded access to literary archives without requiring all physical collections to move to Jerusalem.[6][19] In 2013, the library and YIVO were awarded successor rights to the estate of Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, including his papers, literary manuscripts, library, and publication rights.[6] The physical estate, including his 20,000-volume library, was designated to remain at YIVO in New York, while the institutions agreed to digitize the archive for worldwide scholarly access.[6] Digitization of the Papers of Chaim Grade and Inna Hecker Grade was subsequently completed; spanning 1910–2010, the collection includes manuscripts, typescripts, clippings, correspondence, photographs, and notebooks, with digital assets available through both institutions.[19]

The Visual Memory photographic collection documents Palestine-Israel over approximately 150 years.[21] Its subjects include nineteenth-century Jerusalem, the emergence of Tel Aviv, agricultural settlements, the newly established State of Israel, archaeological excavations, educational institutions, cultural and economic activity, immigrant cultures, and local Arab culture.[21] The wider digital collections include scans of books, manuscripts, newspapers, Talmud pages, maps, and sound recordings, alongside large groups of archival documents and photographs.[12]

The Historical Jewish Press archive makes newspapers from Jewish communities around the world digitally accessible, encompassing 30 languages and publications dating back to the late seventeenth century.[22] Nearly five decades of the New York Jewish Week have been preserved, digitized, and made freely available through it.[22] Music resources likewise include tens of thousands of hours of Israeli and Jewish recordings, while the broader collections preserve both printed music and sound.[12][19]

Israeli legal-deposit requirements make the library responsible for collecting, preserving, and providing access to publications issued in Israel.[23] Intake covers publications regardless of language, format, theme, or quality, without ideological selection.[23] This comprehensive approach documents Israeli written culture, preserves access after publications leave the market, and prevents financial limitations or acquisition choices from excluding titles.[23] Publishers must provide two copies of printed publications to the library.[12]

The deposit requirement originated in British legislation passed in 1924.[23] An amendment accepted as Israeli law in 1953 required one copy of every publication for the State Archive, one for the Knesset Library, and two for the National Library.[23] The Books Law, passed on December 18, 2000, extended requirements beyond publications printed on paper and made the National Library the primary deposit organization.[23] Ordinances taking effect in November 2015 expanded the deposit collection to electronically published material.[23]

Digital intake includes e-books, newspapers and periodicals, audiobooks, music files, and video.[23] Deposited digital publications are stored on secure library servers, with access restricted to users inside the building and limited to two users at a time.[23] Catalogue information remains available through the digital catalogue.[23] The library's statutory obligation to provide proper and reasonable access to the public in Israel and elsewhere includes the use of advanced technology, alongside maintaining facilities for study, preservation, presentation, and research.[4]

Bibliographical work has long complemented collection building.[1] From 1924, the library published the quarterly Kirjath Sepher, listing current publications in Palestine and Israel and Judaic publications appearing elsewhere.[1] Its Institute of Hebrew Bibliography recorded books published in Hebrew characters, and a graduate library school operated at the institution from 1956.[1] Professional guidance and cooperation with other libraries and cultural institutions are also among its legal functions.[4]

The Jewish Review of Books describes the new building's retrieval system as allowing patrons to request items online, after which a robot retrieves them from closed storage.[13] In its account, books in the automated stacks have no permanent shelf locations: the system records a new position when an item is returned.[13] This storage system supports access to materials kept on site rather than on open reading-room shelves.[13]

Cultural and educational activity are among the library's statutory roles, and the new building includes public galleries and an education center.[2][7] Its public-facing collections introduce subjects ranging from Theodor Herzl, Zionism, and Israel's War of Independence to Maimonides and the Zohar.[3] Educational resources include curated lesson plans, digital activities, webinars, and materials concerning Israel and the Jewish calendar.[24] These draw on manuscripts, documents, maps, recordings, and other items of historical and cultural significance to the Jewish people.[24]

“Bearing Witness: The October 7 Archive” gathers oral testimonies, audio recordings, WhatsApp messages, voice memos, and other documentation.[3] The central repository project began in 2023 to preserve material concerning the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing war.[25] At its inception, the work was expected to take five years, supported jointly by the Heritage Ministry and private philanthropic partners.[25] Staff began archiving online and social-media content because it could disappear quickly, collecting testimony, audio and video, messages, press clippings, and social-media ephemera while events were still unfolding.[25]

The archive's collection strategy combines long-term historical documentation with the urgent preservation of vulnerable digital evidence.[25] Its planned access policies also had to address privacy and graphic content.[25] Alongside older manuscripts and established literary archives, this initiative extends the library's documentation work to contemporary communications and personal records generated during a national crisis.[3][25]

Herzog & de Meuron designed the new 45,000-square-meter library, with Mann-Shinar serving as executive architect.[8] A 2023 description identifies 11 stories, six above ground and five below, a main reading hall accommodating 600 people, a 480-seat auditorium, galleries, and an education center.[7] Underground facilities include automated book storage, smaller reading rooms, lecture rooms, and parking, while the main reading halls, auditorium, and staff offices occupy above-ground spaces.[2]

The building received LEED Platinum certification and incorporates solar panels, low-energy lighting, and rock storage to retain thermal energy.[7] Its design responds to the surrounding Knesset, government offices, university, and museum, and includes a public garden.[2] Micha Ullman's outdoor sculpture incorporates 22 Hebrew letters carved in stone.[2] The project cost approximately NIS 860 million, with about 85 percent supported by donations from Yad Hanadiv, the Gottesman family, and other donors, and the remainder in cooperation with the Israeli government.[2]

The Jewish Review of Books describes a curved Jerusalem-stone structure resting above a glass platform, with reading spaces including a Gershom Scholem library and a rare-book room.[13] Its account places most books in underground closed stacks maintained in low-oxygen conditions.[13] It also reports that the most valuable collection items were moved into protective vaults during the delay in inauguration following the October 2023 Hamas attack.[13]

Displays introduced with the new galleries included the Damascus Crown, a roughly millennium-old Torah volume; Maimonides' handwritten commentary on the Mishnah; and a Qur'an approximately a thousand years old.[7] Other highlighted items included the first draft of Naomi Shemer's “Jerusalem of Gold,” a paper found in Hannah Senesh's pocket on the day she was executed, and Stefan Zweig's suicide note.[7] The Jewish Review of Books identifies the permanent exhibition as “A Treasury of Words” and also lists the Rothschild Haggadah and a Syriac Bible translation among its exhibits.[13]

The former Lady Davis Building remains part of the library's architectural history.[2] Its design followed a 1955 architectural competition and collaboration among architects including Ziva Armoni, Hanan Bar-On, and Shulamit and Michael Nadler.[2] Opened in 1960, it was later designated for preservation by the Jerusalem municipality.[2]

A 2023 government proposal to change oversight of the library generated a dispute over public accountability and institutional independence.[14] The attorney general objected to the procedure and raised concerns about terminating existing board members' tenure; the board chair warned of damage to public trust and the institution's continued existence.[26] Education Ministry representatives argued for ministerial oversight of a publicly funded institution, while writers and poets feared political intervention and threatened to withhold archives or cooperation.[27] The proposal to subordinate board appointments to the education minister was subsequently shelved following agreement to appoint a ministerial representative to the audit committee.[27]

Custody of historical collections has also prompted controversy.[13] The Jewish Review of Books describes the disputed deposit, under the Custodian for Absentee Property, of books and manuscripts from Palestinian homes abandoned in western Jerusalem and Haifa in 1948.[13] It also recounts the extended court battle preceding acquisition of the Kafka archive, quoting Israeli lawyers' argument that his manuscripts belonged in the Jewish state as part of the legacy of Jews who contributed to Western civilization.[13]