Gal Koplewitz, The New York Times; Israel’s National Library Reopens After Delay Caused by Hamas Attacks
"“The library has been able to play a tremendously therapeutic role,” said Raquel Ukeles, head of collections at the library. She said that many visitors have been evacuees from the country’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon, where communities are regularly targeted with rockets and shells, or reservists on leave from the Israeli military.
The library has helped stock mobile libraries that travel the country. Its staff members have also assisted in setting up a “pop-up” school in the previous National Library building for roughly 100 children displaced from their homes by fighting along the Lebanese border.
In the library’s reading room stand scores of chairs, each one holding a book chosen to represent one of the hostages taken on Oct. 7...
The library also has found new ways to serve its core mission as a custodian of collective national memory — painful as this new chapter is.
Library workers are salvaging and digitizing local archives from the ravaged communities overrun on Oct. 7. And staffers like Ms. Cooper are gathering and archiving WhatsApp conversations, in recognition of their documentary value. In Kibbutz Be’eri, the site of some of the worst atrocities on Oct. 7, one the more reliable logs of the day’s events are the messages sent on the community’s group chat."
