Join us for a Hanukkah video journey across cultures and time, featuring treasures from the National Library of Israel!
Kirk Douglas: Star of David and Hollywood
He starred in the first Hollywood feature filmed in Israel, but the legendary actor’s connection to the Jewish state and people certainly didn’t start or stop there…
A Rare Glimpse of Jewish Schools in Hungary after the Holocaust
Jewish schools after the destruction: View rare photos smuggled into Israel from post-war Hungary
By Three Things a Person Is Known
Chava Levine shares a bit of what she learned from working on the personal archive of Professor Dov Noy, who was described as “the world’s foremost Jewish folklorist”. The archive is now deposited at the National Library of Israel.
The Jewish Model from Tunisia
A rabbi, a moneychanger and a goldsmith meet in a German photography studio in the early 20th century. No, this is not the opening line of a joke. It is the beginning of a mystery, since all three characters are in fact the same person
The Worm That Built Solomon’s Temple
Did a mysterious little creature, the enigmatic “Shamir”, really help build the First Temple?
Who Was the Real Model for Kafka’s Gregor Samsa?
A leading theory ties the identity of the insect from Franz Kafka’s classic “The Metamorphosis” to the author’s Hebrew teacher
The Jewish Book That Revealed the Secrets of the Heavens
In 1600, three scholars from completely different worlds met in the “New Venice” castle outside Prague. The meeting lasted three weeks and resulted in a Hebrew astronomy book, as well as in a lesson about the unifying power of love for the sciences and the quest for knowledge
The Ad Campaign That Told the Other Story of Soviet Jewry in 1999
In the late 1990s, advertising executive Gary Wexler visited Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union that had suddenly rediscovered their own religious and national identity in the wake of the collapse of communism. These ads captured some of the powerful moments and images of that period in Jewish history…
How Tishrei Became the First Month of the Hebrew Calendar
How did we come to celebrate the New Year in the fall when in the Bible it was celebrated in the spring? And what is the origin of the first month’s peculiar name?
