Library contents: My library consists of a variety of subjects, according to which the several thousand books are sorted. The main topics are anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Nazism and World War II, divided according to sub-topics, along with hundreds of memoirs and testimonies of survivors. Elie Wiesel and Aharon Applefeld gave me their books, and K. Zetnik’s books were given to me by his daughter Daniela. My father, the late Moshe Kitron, who was a member of the Congress presidency, gave me publications of the World Jewish Congress from the 1940s, which were printed at the time of the events and immediately after them.
Apart from them, the library includes history books of the people of Israel and of the State of Israel for their periods. Yehuda My husband and I studied English and American literature at Tel Aviv University, and many shelves contain the best works written in English, along with classics from world literature in general, including for children, and many shelves of Hebrew and Israeli literature and poetry.
Two shelves of ancient books contain mainly prayer cycles and poems passed down from generation to generation in Yehuda’s family, which was expelled from Spain in 1492, exiled to Italy, and in the 19th century arrived in Egypt. Mother, Ruth Kitron nee Gould, a mythology teacher, left us a comprehensive collection on the thought of Israel and Judaism, the Bible, the Mishna and the two Talmuds, Babylonian and Jerusalem. And I added a lot to them, including a large collection of Haggadot for Passover, perhaps inspired by my cousin Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, the late famous historian, who wrote, among other things, a masterful study of the Haggadah for generations. When I was a student, I completed a teacher training course and worked in the field, hence the shelves with Yediat Ha’aretz books And there is no place for additional shelves for Middle Eastern history books, political science, socialism, philosophy, and a great many biographies and autobiographies.
A shelf close to the heart: On the shelf are poetry books by Natan Yonatan, Zelda, Dalia Rabikowitz, Alterman and more, which you can flip through for the umpteenth time. And in the drawer next to the bed is a Bible, and every time a new Hebrew bursts forth from it that has no ruler and no translation.
on four books
the same sea
Amos Oz / Keter, 1999
A book I return to again and again. It is written in prose that is poetry, and I know the section called “Magnificat” by heart. It has an expression of completion and reconciliation, with age, with the mistakes of the past, with the dreams that did not materialize. Oz published the book when he turned sixty years old: “What I lost I forgot, what hurt me faded, what I gave up I gave up and what I have left will be enough.”
fear
Stefan Zweig / Yedioth Ahronoth, 1947
Zweig left behind a series of masterpiece works and biographies, including stories that penetrate the woman’s soul with a minute-by-minute understanding, such as “Fear” (published in 1946, four years after his suicide with his wife in Brazil, in the “Booklet” series edited by Azriel Carlibach, and cost 300 prof.). So is “Twenty-four hours in the life of a woman” (Zamora Beitan, 1984) – stories that you can return to again and again and each time discover new layers of the tension between the harmonious and orderly married life and the storm of emotions.
my little sister
Abba Kovner / Poalim Library, 1970
I became aware of Kovner’s extensive work when I wrote his biography, and I keep coming back to the poem for which he received the Israel Prize. He writes about the monastery where he hid, not far from the Vilna ghetto, before returning to it with the proclamation in his hand calling not to go like sheep to the slaughter, and about the little sister knocking on the door “with weeping nails”. Every line is a full world, every page oozes mockery of the hypocrisy of the Christian world that shut itself behind a wall when “an entire people went up in the ovens”.
To where the wind goes
Haim Beer / Am Oved, 2010
After reading a particularly depressing book about the Holocaust or Nazism, I read Baer’s book again. The plot describes with a sharp humor a reba from Bnei Brak who wanders in Tibet with a blonde Shiksha, after unexpectedly leaving his scheming girlfriend at home. A playful book.
The post “Each page oozes mockery of the hypocrisy of the Christian world when ‘an entire people went up in the ovens'” appeared first on First Source.
