Yesterday, one of Ima’s friends gave us a tour of the National Library.
The tour was really interesting and I learned a lot.
I was shocked that the National Library has been an institution much longer than the state of Israel has been around.
The National Library has 4,000,000 books! They also have Arabic Newspapers, ancient and modern maps of Israel, Hebrew and Arabic letter manuscripts, photos, digitized Jewish Newspapers, music and sound recordings, archives, and so much more.
On our tour we saw these weird cubicle looking machines that apparently are microfilm (stuff from the old days used to view documents). I found all this very interesting.
In the Library’s two reading rooms there are many books and places to sit and read. I was fascinated by the fact that you only have to wait about 12 minutes to get the book you requested if the book is not in the reading room and it needs to be retrieved from the basement storage rooms where moat of the book are stored.
There was a stained glass window that was beautiful and much better than the Chagall Windows, in my opinion. Moredcai Ardon was the creator of the window and made it in the memory of his wife. The window shows kabbalistic (mystic) themes and prophecies of the coming of the messiah.
Stained glass window
Inscription on the window in memory of Moredcai Ardon’s wife.
Microfilm
One of the reading rooms
-Alexandra