Strashun Library News Today

In 1942, in Vilna in what is now Lithuania, a group of Jews worked to hide books, art, and other cultural artifacts from the Nazis. Led by poets Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginskithe group was known as the Paper Brigade of Vilna, and it took and hid the items that had been part of the

The historical background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back to 1917 (the Balfour Declaration) and the establishment of the British protectorate

Today, it is clear that his faith in America’s fledging yeshivah world bore generations of blessed fruits

Rav Dovid had the bearing of an old-school baal mussar and a master educator

Since used bookstores have been sprinting toward invisibility for decades, discovering Tony Jacobs’ Sideshow Books on La Cienega Boulevard is a reader’s dream come to life.

The Great Synagogue of Vilna, Lithuania contained one of the world’s great Jewish libraries, the Strashun Library. The contents of the Strashun Library were a main target of the Nazis’ ...

An Israeli excavation of the famed Great Synagogue in Vilnius (Vilna), Lithuania, has fully exposed the Aron Kodesh (Torah Ark) and the Bimah (raised podium) that was destroyed decades ago by the Nazis and the Soviets.

In 1942, Dr. Adele Kibre—dark-haired, wicked-eyed, a medievalist by training—began work as an overseas agent for the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications. This Committee was a branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS): the wartime predecessor to the CIA, which sought to acquire documents in Europe that the Allies could use to develop intelligence and plan covert operations. Kibre, a scholar, was now also a spy. Kibre was an ideal fit for the job. Af...

Rav Dovid Kamenetsky brings Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski to life. “Everything we have today, the entire yeshivah world, is from Rav Chaim Ozer”  Photos: Eli Cobin, Personal Archives Walking into Rav Dovid Kamenetsky’s Har Nof apartment, I’m immediately struck by the resemblance to his father, Rav Shmuel, whose picture adorns the living room wall along with a photo of his grandfather, Rav Yaakov. My conversation with this modest talmid chacham, who is also a self-made scholarly historian...