There is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Address at the Opening of Concord Free Public Library” I was having dinner last week with a neighbor who, with his team, recently had a meeting with Bill Gates to discuss their project within the Gates Foundation. One of the words he used to describe Gates was "polymath." He spoke of Gates as having an incredibly deep knowledge in a wide variety of subject matter and...
Of Interest: Morrissey, The Talmud, The Occupy Movement “Explained” and The Best of Early Vanity Fair
"The solution to all predicaments is the goodness of privacy in a warm room with books" - Morrissey He is near the top of most lists ranking the world's best songwriters and his tenure with The Smiths had a monumental impact on the 1980's music scene yet by reading his Autobiography one has to shake their head in disbelief at the resistance his road to success has endured. The polluted record industry and corrupt legal system weigh prominently in the book. The radio stations wouldn't play his music and an ex-Smith band mate took him to the cleaners via a less than fair...
Kafka’s notebook, the first written evidence of Yiddish and more as Israel’s National Library opens up
13th-century German prayer book containing the earliest evidence of the Yiddish language. The goal is daunting: Undertake "a worldwide initiative to digitize every Hebrew manuscript in existence." To celebrate the project, the National Library of Israel is opening its vaults to give the world a peek and some of the jewels of their collection. The Associated Press was offered "a rare glimpse at its most prized treasures," some never before seen and others that has been locked away for years. The jewels include manuscripts by Sir Issac Newton and Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon and a Hebrew vocabuary notebook by Kafka, who took Hebrew lessons...
Anne Frank was not alone: Holocaust diary of 14-year-old Rywka Lipszyc finds the light
What seems like a divine series of events has culminated in the publication of the Holocaust diary of a 14 year old girl. Here's what we know: -When Rywka Lipszyc began her diary, she had lived in the Lodz ghetto for more than three years and had already lost both of her parents. -her diary cover six months in the Lodz ghetto starting in 1943. -Zinaida Berezovskaya, A Soviet Red Army doctor found the diary beside a crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. - Berezovskaya kept the diary hidden in a closet in her home in Omsk (in southwestern Siberia) until her death...
One Word, 6 Million Times: “And Every Single One Was Someone.”
Today is the the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and UN General Assembly has designated this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It started innocently enough. As a math and Jewish studies teacher in a Jewish day school, Phil Chernofsky was looking for a different and meaningful way for his students to relate to the Holocaust. From that challenge comes “And Every Single One Was Someone” The cover depicts a Jewish prayer shawl and has no words. The entire book consists of just one word: Jew. It is repeated 6 million times. Each page has 40 columns of 120 lines...