Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Yesterday with the help of Kyle Marsh (Thank you!) and his new(ish) truck (pictured below) we brought over the new shelves from Bradley video store to the library. After I cleaned it thoroughly I installed it in the library (see the second picture.) I still may rearrange its content, but for now you can see that on its top we have the new arrival of fiction and non-fiction books, on the top shelf we have our DVDs and the others shelves host all of our VHS tapes. Finally they can be all together, displayed in a way that allows easy browsing of all the titles.

As I mentioned last week the library could use a pickup truck without its shell for an hour to deliver a new DVD shelves. I bought one of these for our house on Sunday. As I live 3-4 blocks from the video rental place that was selling it I just dollied it home. You can see below how that went. But using a dolly for 6-8 miles to get the other shelves to the library is beyond my physical capacity and bravery. If you have the time and a truck, don’t hesitate to let us know.

A few weeks ago our library’s name officially changed to Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library. With this alteration (including the “Jewish Community” in our name) we would like to emphasize that the library is open to the whole community. Members of Congregation Beth Ami created and supported (and keep supporting) the library with their money, time and attention. It is owned and used by you. These same CBA members also hoped that the library would grow to be a true community resource, to be enjoyed by and benefit the whole local Jewish community. The name change reflects a step towards fulfilling this dream.

To serve the community’s needs; we would like to provide you with the kind of information and entertainment you seek. Our assessment is that new novels, movies on DVD and books related to Kabbalah and spirituality are in highest demand, as these are the items with the strongest circulation numbers. Therefore, we will strengthen these areas of our collection.

Last month I recommended some of our newer novels in this spirit. As you can see below I am recommending some of the new DVDs the library acquired. We are actively working on growing our DVD collection with a particular focus on feature films related to Jews, Judaism and Israel. Let us know which movies you would like to see in our collection and we will try our best to purchase them. Meanwhile here are some of our recent acquisitions:

• Broken Wings - (2002, 87 min, rated R)
  As a family seems to fall apart after the abrupt death of husband/father, a sudden incident gives them a chance to heal their ‘broken wings’.
• Kedma -  (2002, 100 min, not rated)
  In May 1948, shortly before the creation of the State of Israel, hundreds of immigrants from across Europe arrive in Palestine–only to risk arrest by British troops.
• Munich -  (2005, 164 min, rated R)
  The world was watching in 1972 as 11 Israeli athletes were murdered at the Munich Olympics. This is the story of what happened next.
• Yellow Asphalt -  (2001, 87 min, not rated)
  Three stories set among the Bedouin of Jahalin in the hills of the Judean desert.
• When Do We Eat? - (2005, 86 min, rated R)
  A family’s Passover gets screwy after the patriarch unknowingly ingests a hit of Ecstasy.

As you may know Bradley video is closing several of its stores. They are even selling the fixtures. I am thinking of buying one of their DVD racks to replace the current furniture in the library that has the VHS tapes in its side and the DVDs and new books on its top. However Bradley’s DVD shelves did not fit in the truck I borrowed, because the truck’s shell could not be taken off. I am wondering whether a reader of this blog has a pick-up truck that we could use to transport the shelves from the store (at Piner and Marlow) to the library. Let me know if you do and are available to help with it.

The DVD shelves needing to be moved are 4×4x2 feet.

Thank you in advance.

This blog reached a minor milestone with this post. It is the 200th message we post. Quantity of course does not equal quality, but we hope that most of our messages provided some value for you. Thank you for your continued support, dear readers and patrons.

In order to make it easier to find a title and to browse our DVD collection I changed the call numbers of the DVDs. The call numbers are the short combination of letters (and numbers) on the spine of the boxes. In the past they have followed the order we received the DVDs, i.e. we had “DVD 01″ for the longest time, followed by “DVD 02″ and so on.

In preparing the new system I first separated the documentaries from the feature films. Thus making it similar to our books, where you can find fictions in a different section of the library than the non-fiction. As you might have noticed the call numbers for novels start with “F” followed by the first few letters of the author’s name. The feature film DVDs follow now a similar system and their call number starts with D (signifying that it is a DVD, not a book), followed by an F and ending with the first three letters of the movie’s title. The call numbers for the documentaries are assigned similarly, except of course without the “F”.

When time permits the same system will be applied to our VHS tapes, with the additional category for children films. Here is the full list of the DVDs we currently have with their new call numbers (and the old in parenthesis). For more information about them check our DVD page:

Documentaries:

D Int: Into the arms of strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (DVD 01)
D Her: Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (DVD 03-10)
D Rel: Relentless (DVD 02)
D Tri: The Tribe (DVD 11)

Feature films

D F Bro: Broken Wings (DVD 18)
D F Edg: Edges of the Lord (DVD 16)
D F Est: Esther Kahn (DVD 12)
D F For: For your consideration (DVD 19)
D F Fre: Free Zone (DVD 13)
D F Ked: Kedma (DVD 20)
D F Kee: Keeping Up With the Steins (DVD 17)
D F Mon: Monsieur Ibrahim (DVD 15)
D F Mun: Munich (DVD 21)
D F Wal: Walk on Water (DVD 14)
D F Yel: Yellow Asphalt (DVD 22)

The library will be open tomorrow, Friday October 3 from 11 AM till 3 PM. As Jean Rudy, the director of the Nursery School, explained the parents will be on campus for longer than usual. This is an excellent oportunity for them to come in and check our collection. I hope to see them. When we are open, we are open to everybody, of course, so feel free to come by even if you are not a parent of a child attending the nursery. We plan to have the library open at least once a month on Friday, so those who work, but get some Fridays off could visit us.

Besides being open at the regular hours (Monday-Thursday afternoons 2-6 and Sunday mornings 9-12.30) the library will have three special programs, all free of charge, waiting for you in October.

On Sunday, the 19th we continue our monthly “Breakfast @ the Library” program. We are inviting every child and parent of the religious school, students at the Sunday morning adult classes, all members of local synagogues and any interested members of the public once a month for breakfast. From 8.45 till 10:30 AM we will serve bagels, shmears and juices at the library. We will have a chance to talk about our interesting new books and exciting upcoming programs.

On Sunday, the 26th the library will have a table at Simcha Sunday, where we will have materials (themed book lists, bookmarks, event flyers…) to take home. We are also planning to sell used books benefiting the library. For this latter cause we would like to ask you to donate your unwanted Judaica books up to a week before the event. It can be any book related to any aspect of Judaism, but we can only take books that are in “sellable” condition.

Last but not least we are happy to announce that Maggie Anton, an award-winning author, will give a talk entitled “Rashi’s Daughters: Three Women and a Talmud” in CBA’s social hall, at 7 PM on Wednesday, October 29th. She will discuss her historical novels and how Jewish women in Medieval France can be an inspiration to us today. Ms. Anton wrote three books on Rashi’s daughters. Her latest “Secret Scholar” is a tale of a young girl who challenges social conventions to engage in Jewish learning. This book is appropriate for both young and not so young adults. Hint: bring your (pre-)teen child to the talk for an inspiring evening.

We would like to introduce some of the new novels the library recently acquired, all showcased on our “new arrivals” shelf:

• Pearl Abraham’s “The seventh beggar” takes us from the contemporary life of a Hasidic teenager to Nachman of Bratslav’s past world of lost writings and courtly ritual, from a religious community in upstate New York to Palestine and Ukraine.
• Sayed Kashua’s “Let it be morning” illuminates the lives of Israel’s Arab minority through the story of an unnamed journalist who returns from Tel Aviv to his home village with his wife and infant daughter, in search of affordable living.
• Meir Shalev’s “The loves of Judith” is resolved slowly by Judith’s son Zayde, who may be the child of any of the three men–or, remarkably, all three. And so the men raise him, care for him, love him.
• Stacy Sims‘ “Swimming naked” unfolds the story of Lucy Greene’s childhood, at the height of which sits a freak accident that occurred one fateful summer at the family lake house, an event that transforms the family and sets a mother and her daughters on a very different course.
• Kate Wenner’s “Dancing with Einstein” explores the impact that history can have on a young life is powerful and moving, weaving back and forth between 1970s New York and 1950s Princeton.
• Steve Stern’s “The angel of forgetfulness” combines three distinct but interlinked narratives: the story of Nathan Hart, a Jewish immigrant on the Lower East Side circa 1910, a tale about an angel named Mocky and his half-human son and the account of Saul, a morose, lonely young man.

Last Sunday I had a chance to read another story for the students of the religious school. As all the good children books related to the High Holy Days were out, borrowed by the students on previous weeks, I selected one about Shabbat. That is an always appropriate topic. The book was titled “Yossef Mokir Shabbos, a Talmudic story from our sages” and besides having big pictures on every page and only a few lines of text in English it also had the story in (pointed) Hebrew. Hence the book is good for studying/practicing Hebrew as well. But be aware that this is not original Talmudic text (from Tractate Shabbos 119, but a modern paraphrase by R. Keren.

The story is simple: a gentile is told by a stargazer that all his money will end up in Yossef’s hands. So he sells everything buys a huge diamond, puts it in his hat that is blown into the river, where a fish gulps it. The fishermen catch the fish; sell it to Yossef right before Shabbat, because they know that Yossef loves Shabbat so much he would buy an extra fish even if it is almost late. The lesson from the last page: “If someone lends to Shabbos, Shabbos will pay him back.”

The children liked the simple, but colorful pictures, learned a few new words (wealth, property) and some of them guessed ahead correctly what will happen at the end.

At our last committee meeting Mark Rosen suggested something I should have thought of myself: having a shelf to display the new arrivals. This could help those patrons, who visit the library regularly in finding what’s new. However the library is rather short on space, so I could not easily fit in a new shelf for this purpose. Therefore I decided to take down the computer (more specifically the monitor/mouse and keyboard combo) that has been dedicated to be used by visitors, but in reality got very little usage.

From now on, when you enter the library, you will find the new materials right in the center. They are divided to two and half sections. On the left you will find the new novels. This is closest to the door, because these books are the most often sought, so I wanted to make it easy to find them. Then in the center you have the new non-fictions books we got. Finally on the other side you can find all the DVDs we have. This includes new and older items as well. We currently have 22 DVDs, most of them are feature films, and all listed on our DVD page with a link to their respective internet movie database (IMDB) page, release year, length, rating and if available linking to our blog entry on the book or to its trailer on YouTube.