LIBRARY ANECDOTES

A young girl soldier came to the library and began to study the shelves.  After a short time, one of the librarians told Edyth the girl had found a set of 5 books which she had loved as a child and been looking for in all the 2nd hand bookshops for years.  They now live at her house!

Several Russian high-school students eagerly read our Sci-Fi collection. Speaking Russian at home and Hebrew in school, they covet the books in English as they say the translations are not at all appealing. 

One day there was a knock at the door and a very charming young American woman stood there.  She had arrived in town a few hours earlier and headed straight for the library.  I asked how she knew about us so quickly and she said that she had told the immigration people in NY that she just couldn’t be in a place without a library. He said she’d be fine in Safed.

Then there was the lovely young man from Ramat Gan who bought a second-hand book and found our library stamp in it.  He is collecting books by Silverberg and we sent him some of our duplicates. Shortly thereafter I found out that he is in the army and our package of books arrived on his 18^th birthday – his best present that day.

A brilliant young man with a PhD in Philosophy, who makes the long drive to the library from a kibbutz on the Lebanon border, found a book that he says he had been searching for for 24 years. 

There was a phone call asking if we had material on Korczak.  With apologies, I admitted that the biography which I had owned and read didn’t move in our library so I had given it to a high school where the Holocaust was part of the curriculum.  We succeeded, however, in finding several books in our excellent and much read Holocaust section that were exactly right for the woman’s doctoral studies.

A woman facing all the emotional trauma involved in a diagnosis of cancer, found some solace in Dr. Siegel’s books on “Love, Medicine and Miracles”, as well as several books by people who survived cancer. There are readers that take courage from these. 

Every diet book gets thorough use, and cookbooks appeal to many of the men as well as the women…particularly the vegetarians. On macrobiotics we have books on the background of this method as well as cookbooks. Recently a woman whose husband developed diabetes was overjoyed to discover a cookbook with desserts for diabetics!

The magazine section ranges from high fashion to interior design to science. When the containers overflow, the magazines are passed on to other libraries or to elementary schools for cutting and preparing collages.

Once there was a high school boy who had a tremendous crush on Barbara Streisand, and we have several biographies. When one of our magazines featured Barbara on its cover, the young man’s English improved greatly reading about his idol.

A local child was home sick so his father borrowed “Treasure Island” for him. The child, who normally would not tackle a book in English, read the story to the end and liked it so much that he wanted to discuss it with his father. The father had had a very deprived childhood and never had read “Treasure Island”, but he sat down and read it on the spot, enjoying a beautiful shared experience with his son.

Recently a lovely baby girl was born in the Golan and the parents could not agree on a name. The father called and asked if we had any guide to Jewish names. When we answered that we had the best book available on the subject, the father made a special trip to Safed to see it. The little girl now has a name and both parents are happy.

Duplicate books are sent to many places, including Emanuel where a kind of branch library service is maintained in one woman’s home.  The thank you letter for one package mentioned that a child in the community had been ill in the hospital for a long period and the only thing which kept the mother strong was having books to read while she sat at her little one’s bedside.

There are many stories, and they reward us for the work the library does.