What is the closest pleasure to reading books?
Apparently, listening to a podcast, or essay in pure Hebrew, about books, writers and literature.
In this sense, the National Library's new series of treatises, which boasts a somewhat generic name, "The Librarians' Convention," promises and sustains - the enjoyment that listeners will derive from it thanks to the combination of multiple and varied literature, art and history.
The seven episodes of the series that have been published so far provide a taste of a variety of fascinating topics, from the twists and turns of the spectacular manuscripts of the biblical books of Syrian Jews ("Damascus Crowns"), through the secrets behind Naomi Shemer's poems to the celebration of 70 years of Tamar Bornstein's According to Vered Lyon-Yerushalmi, presenter of "The Libraries' Approach, the podcast aims to make the treasures of the archives and unique collections preserved in the National Library accessible to the public."
However, the mask is a capricious medium: in order to captivate the listeners, who are at all times under the attack of other stimuli, it is necessary to create in them an ascending curve of interest.
Like cinema, it is difficult to do so without an accurate and meticulous script.
In fact, in the absence of the visual dimension, the art of screenwriting in a podcast is of double importance.
"In each half-hour episode, I talk to an archivist, historian or family member of a creator whose archive is kept in the library, and during the conversation we discover new and surprising angles about the most interesting people and collections in the library," explains Lyon-Yerushalmi.
"The added value of the librarian's incarnation is embodied in a window that opens to listeners for a personal acquaintance with the heroes of our culture and with Jewish and Israeli history through personal diaries, letters and other manuscripts."
Behind the logs.
Hannah Szenes // Credit: GPO,
The miraculous power of diaries and letters is reflected in the seventh episode of the series, dedicated to the character of Theodor Herzl. Lyon-Yerushalmi and National Library scholar Galia Richler-Gerbler deal with it in Herzl's personal life, and discover a slightly different angle of the state contract - less the great man of the world and more a tormented, frustrated and hurt person. They remove from the seemingly familiar figure of every Israeli the armor of a witty journalist and a great statesman, and tell of the letters in which Herzl shared with his parents his family difficulties, his admiration for his mother and the sad fate of his three children Paulina, Hans and Trudeau, who died in tragic circumstances.
Above all, the exchange of letters between Theodore and his wife Julie reveals the drama of a marriage that runs aground and creates a quicksand of dilapidated mental states. "I thank God that I have so far been able to maintain my self-control," Herzl wrote in one of their pains, and when you hear the rest of the description from his mouth, you realize that the nickname "Hell" is not really excessive. The stark contrast between Herzl's two faces must be seen as complete - or in the words of Dr. Alex Bain, the important biographer of the founder of political Zionism, "the Jewish people owe a great debt of gratitude to Herzl's miserable marriage."
"The Librarian's Task" opens with a chapter on Hannah Szenes, marking one hundred years since her birth. Dr. Hezi Amior, curator of the Israel Collection at the National Library, tells of her childhood as a gifted student in Budapest, her immigration to Israel accompanied by painful compromises, her longing for love that was never realized, and finally the fateful decision to return to Europe in World War II to save Jews. By thickening the story, it is possible to deepen and discover more and more aspects of the heroine of the chapter.
Szenes' archive, which also includes the manuscripts of her poems, diaries and extensive correspondence with her family and others, and two creepy items found in her dress pocket after her execution (last poem she wrote in Hungarian and a farewell note she wrote to her mother), was recently purchased. In 2020, the National Library contacted the Szenes family, as well as Uri and Mirit Eisen, Arizona residents, who generously refused to help transfer the archive to the National Library.
Unlike the chapters on Herzl and Szenes, the pamphlet dedicated to Kofiko does not have great dramas, but there are quite a few insights into the formation of a basic figure in young Israeli culture. During Vered Lyon-Yerushalmi's conversation with Noga Barak, the eldest daughter of the author Tamar Bornstein-Lazar, they trace the path of the anarchist mischief symbol to the pages of books, television screens and theater stages. It turns out that the brazen monkey's leap to the top was not easy - Kofiko progressed from a literary character to a TV star to the writer's heartbroken, who was very worried about what might happen to him in the transition from book to TV play, and later to a commercial media brand.
In addition to nice butterflies (did you know that Ein Ganim, Kofiko's place of residence, is a real neighborhood in Petah Tikva, and formerly the first workers' moshav established in Eretz Israel, the cradle of pioneering and the founding of the Histadrut?), Lyon-Yerushalmi and Barak are trying to understand A literary fashion is being created whose echoes are heard to this day.
The recipe, it turns out, is certainly not even 70 years after the birth of the monkey and the series.
But with the result it is hard to argue: this is one of the few cases in Israeli literature where parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and probably also great-grandchildren, grew up on the same literary figure.