1.
When staff from the Swiss architects firm Herzog & de Meuron looked around the halls of the old National Library of Israel in Giva Ram a few years ago, they became curious about people wandering between the shelves carrying enormous books – giant volumes covered in thick leather, with gold writing on the front. When the archaeologists asked what the oversized books were – if they were special encyclopedias or photo albums with an unusual format, they were told that they were volumes of the Babylonian Talmud. The Gemara, they were told, requires a special and uncompromising page format, and therefore it was published in an exceptional size.
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The insistence of the Swiss doesn't require explanation and debate (unlike in the Talmud), and after a week the architects returned with a plan: In the new National Library building, a Talmud library, including all the Gemara volumes in the National Library's possession, would sit at the heart of the planned reading room (which was designed like the shape of a descending spiral).
Now it's here – a cloud-like wooden bookcase, bright and polished, branching out like a small altar in the center of the shared space of the reading rooms. "It's a modernist firm, not Jewish, but they invested a lot of time into thinking about and understanding Jewish culture and its roots," explains Oren Weinberg, director of the National Library, while running his hand over the dusty shelf that will soon be full of books. "Since they discovered the Talmud, they've also discovered the laws of shmita, and even planned the building's mezuzot with us."
2.
We visited the new National Library when countless books were being transferred from the old building to the new facility. In the last few weeks, four million books have traveled the 870 yards from their iron and wooden shelves to the illuminated and spacious hall at 36 Ruppin Road, in the government complex, opposite the Knesset. Previously, the important collections were unceremoniously moved. At the library, the commotion of a project nearing its completion fills the air, full of passion and rustling, and some fatigue, which dissipates in the greater vision that is almost upon us. There is no havoc, only a constant buzzing afoot. Appropriately, given that it is managed by a Swiss firm, which has managed mega-projects like the Tate Modern, the Allianz Arena in Munich, and the Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing – the project has kept on schedule without deviating from its budget, a kind of operative calmness which is almost scandalous in these parts. The library is currently scheduled to open to the public on October 22nd.
Video: The new Israel National Library / Credit: Yaniv Zohar
The temporary management offices were set up in the demarcated wooden areas in the underground parking lot and will be removed when the library is opened to the public. Everywhere, the workers are engaged in painting, preparations, and sanding the final corners. This enormous project, which has cost around NIS900 million, is basically complete: with precise lighting that relies partly on sunlight, with precise air conditioning, and most importantly a feeling of spaciousness, full of glory and honor. There's nothing flashy here, just an exceptional depth of detail and architectural, technological, and museum-like implementation.
Most importantly, it's still a library: It took a lengthy process to decide on the optimal chair for the visiting public. Different types of chairs were distributed around the old library, and studies were carried out before choosing the winner. 600 of these will be placed around the halls, representing the maximum number of readers.
These are days of constant tension and anxiety. The move carried with it great responsibility for the fragile collections, which require careful preservation, and millions of books, as well as the digital collection. The hierarchy during the move is nearly military; everything is being done quietly, but there is still great tension. At the entrance to the elevator is a portable bookshelf on wheels on its way to its new dwellings: German Requiem by Amos Elon alongside a volume of The Laws of Inheritance and Estate and Principles of Chemistry.
When one pauses to think about the range of the books, about the layers of text, about the knowledge, the information, about the memory that has been gathered and stockpiled and grows bigger and bigger every day – and about the need to move it all – one starts to have palpitations. When the German writer W.G. Sebald wrote about the new national library in Paris in his outstanding novel Austerlitz, he described how "birds which had lost their way in the library forest flew into the mirror images of the trees in the reading room windows, struck the glass with a dull thud, and fell lifeless to the ground." The Israeli National Library, with its endless bibliographic aspirations, can easily become a forest to get lost in.
3.
The encounter between the Swiss architects and the Israeli culture of implementation wasn't easy. Every contractor was equipped with a book of precise instructions featuring sketches and detailed instructions on how to install every last item. European perfectionism became obsessive. Weinberg, a librarian since birth and a tech figure, said: "The building has been ready for nearly two years, but workers have been going back and forth according to the book, checking that there isn't any damage to the concrete. With time, one of the Swiss managers has learned the Hebrew phrase "a local solution" – and when he uses it you know that he isn't satisfied," Weinberg said. Alongside the Swiss architects are staff from the Israeli architectural firm Mann Shinar.
A maximum of 2,000 people can visit the library at any one time. While 180,000 people visit the old library in Givat Ram annually, Weinberg's forecast is that more than 500,000 people will visit each year. "We need to be an obligatory stop, alongside the Western Wall and Yad Vashem," he said.
The library has two main entrances – one opposite the Knesset and another on Ruppin Road. The light rail's Green Line, the Campus line, is supposed to stop nearby, but that will probably only happen in 2026. Meanwhile, for those coming from the city center, the walk from Shazar Avenue or from Begin Station is not pleasant during the summer.
From Ruppin Street one can already see the image of the oval roof, which refers both to a water well and a scroll, a hint to the library's Gershom Scholem collection, which includes many scrolls. As one comes closer to the outer walls of the building, one understands that a new Jerusalem cornerstone is being created here. "Our architects wanted to create one monumental stone, like the massive stone of the walls," Weinberg says. The results combine an industrial design of stone digging and its penetration into large concrete surfaces, which creates a smooth movement of the wall, and along it are clover shapes – representing the Bunting Clover Leaf Map, which is stored in the library. The map, a historic 16th-century map by the German Protestant pastor and cartographer Heinrich Buntin, describes the world as a clover leaf with Jerusalem in its center.
Like bunkers in the Golan Heights, the building work here also makes use of the stones that were confined within special meshed cages, accumulating the Jerusalem chill during the night, and emitting it into the halls during the day. In this way, the building saves 20 percent of its electricity costs.
The library is an architectural sustainability project, the first of its kind in Israel. Apart from the clover stones that cover the entire building, slits have been made that spill adjusted light from the outside into the halls and the permanent exhibition spaces. The building is not fenced, allowing visitors to circle it by foot, and as well as the classrooms and reading rooms there are views of gardens and wild vegetables.
By the side of the building is Letters of Light, an environmental sculpture by Micha Ullman. This is an artistic venture that aims to close a circle, to complement and correspond with Ulman's The Empty Library installation in Berlin. There, one sees a white library, whose burning books no longer exist, a disturbing and powerful image in the sealed cell on the square's sidewalk. Here, in Jerusalem, Ullman's "library" is above the ground, going down to the foundations – to their letters and phrases. Ullman created a circle of letters that are exposed to the Jerusalem sunlight. The negative shadow of the stone creates the body and the form of the letter, like a sundial. 18 letters are arranged in a circle, and guttural letters are placed separately, in the passage leading to the library building.
4.
The permanent exhibition, "Treasure of Words," is the only part of the National Library that will charge an entrance fee. Despite this, they are promising that once a month, or maybe once a week, there will be free entry, like at other museums and cultural institutions around the world. The exhibition is still being prepared; at its entrance sits the voice artist Victoria Hanna with a voice technician and computer. Her work, called The Power of Words, is based on 'the incantation bowl,' an ancient clay bowl decorated with text that has magical properties to fight demons and witchcraft. This will serve as the introduction to the exhibition. According to the curators, Neta Assaf and Yigal Tzalmona, the exhibition seeks "to present the power of the text to change the world, to formulate and to lead great ideas, to define a place, community, and nation and sometimes even to set them in motion, and of course – to create an imagined reality."
The technological and design investment in the exhibition space is unprecedented, as is the possibility to experience from up close incredible items from the library, which until now were kept far from the public eye. Only five millimeters of clear, anti-reflective glass separate visitors from the Damascus Pentateuch, a Bible codex that was written in the 10th century and received Maimonides's seal of approval. The volume of this great and majestic Pentateuch lays open on a shtender, the book stand used by yeshiva students, so that visitors can almost read and learn from it. Nor is it alone – the first printed Bibles, Maimonides's handwriting, the source of the Peshitta – an Aramaic translation of the Bible – all of these are finally going on public display.
The great challenge in presenting these in a museum stems from problems caused by modern paper. It wears out more quickly and absorbs chemical materials and artificial preservatives, which don't survive. Because of this, the library ordered a special glass-fronted cabinet display from Belgium, the first of its kind in Israel. It is divided into display draws, which are pulled out digitally by pressing a button next to the curatorial text. In this way one can see from up close the suicide letter of Stefan Zweig (the author of The World of Yesterday), the handwriting of Agnon, and the time cards and characters that served David Grossman when he wrote "See Under: Love."
5.
That the National Library is joining the national institutions in late 2023 teaches us that, even as we enter the fourth quarter of its first century, the State of Israel is still young. While in most countries the national library is independent and always located geographically close to government institutions, in Israel the law recognizing the National Library was only enacted in 2007. According to the law, the purpose of the National Library is to "collect, preserve, cultivate and endow the treasures of knowledge, heritage, and culture in general, with an emphasis on the Land of Israel, the State of Israel and the Jewish people in particular." Control of the national bibliography is achieved through laws for the deposit of all books and printed material, which requires that a copy or final draft of each text is sent to the national library.
This law, as well as the Hebrew University's agreement to "to nationalize" its library's treasures and collections, led Yad Hanadiv to financially support the building of the new library, like the support it provided for the building of the Knesset and the Supreme Court building. The Guttman Foundation also contributed. Planning for the building began in 2012, and the cornerstone was laid the following year. Once the foundations had been dug in 2018, the building work itself began.
The library building has 11 floors – five above the ground and six below. 46,000 square meters, on 16.5 dunams of land. Each floor is different. On the entrance floor, next to the "Library Experience," which aims to help the younger generation navigate the library, is the permanent exhibition space and an elegant auditorium with 500 seats. Beneath them begins the magic of the reading rooms, an exceptional location in terms of visibility and feeling, alongside which are dozens of classrooms, workspaces, and a restaurant that is open during the day.
The automatic book cache is located underneath. This is a skyscraper of metallic bookshelves, a breathtaking logistical monster. This is where millions of books that are available to all Israeli citizens are found. A book can be ordered using an app, and the robot will supply it within a few minutes. "So you can get on the train to Jerusalem and order a specific book on the way, and when you arrive it will already be waiting for you," Weinberg says. The big change is the need for technical hands. While at Givat Ram the assembling was done manually, now the book cache is maintained completely automatically. Like the logistical facilities of large retail companies, here the robot also runs around the different rows of the storeroom and pulls out a box. From there the box is taken to the collection room for the specific book to be chosen. These are optimal storage conditions. The oxygen is diluted in the space, and therefore the books are protected from the threat of fire. When a technician enters to carry out maintenance work, he needs to have an oxygen cylinder and saturation monitor with him.
We are now climbing to the reading spaces, and then to the special collections. Here you must register in advance to see the exceptional books and documents. But there is no discrimination – it doesn't matter if you are a university professor or a high school student – any reason is sufficient to receive access.
During the final preparations, I feel like documenting everything. The library shining in its emptiness. But, within a few weeks, it will fill up forever. This is the moment beforehand, and the spirit of Walter Benjamin dismantling his library pops up in my thoughts: "The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness."
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