2008 Woodie Awards
The Library Fire at JTS
Hillel Goldberg
Issue date: 8/31/05 Section: Features
In 1966, in college, it was hard to study, and I can't just blame the times. More than a civil rights revolution, a cultural revolution and the Vietnam War pulled me away from my studies. I.T., my best friend in college, and I, had our own self-created distractions.
We found charity or social work cases to take on. We worked for Soviet Jewry; we helped students struggling with gratuitous bureaucratic sufferings imposed on them by Yeshiva College. We also engaged in more than our share of philosophical discussions, engendered by what we regarded as, alternatively, brilliant or stupid remarks made by our religious studies instructors. We spent way too much time saving the world and far too little time studying.
One day, after a long stretch spending hours each day on all kinds of projects, we had a heart-to-heart. We just had to stop paying attention to the world and start paying attention to school. We reached a solemn agreement. No more cases. No more projects. No more discussions.
This was in the early afternoon. A couple of hours later, I.T. knocked on my door. He was only slightly sheepish, maybe not even that. Basically, it's as if we had never spoken that day and never reached an agreement. He says: A fire has burned down much of the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary. And what wasn't burned, is now about to be lost due to massive water damage. Books are water-logged.
What happened to our previous resolve, only a couple of hours old?
Did we even have that discussion?
We didn't even refer to it.
I.T. looked at me. I looked at him.
We had to save the water-logged, sacred tomes in the library. We had to do it.
Little did we know that we would miss a lot more than a few classes because of our new, next and biggest project yet.
I went down to JTS. The institution had a tower with a window at the top engraved (in Hebrew) with the words from Exodus, "The bush was burning but was not consumed." Ironically, from out of that window poured large and unending billows of smoke.
We found charity or social work cases to take on. We worked for Soviet Jewry; we helped students struggling with gratuitous bureaucratic sufferings imposed on them by Yeshiva College. We also engaged in more than our share of philosophical discussions, engendered by what we regarded as, alternatively, brilliant or stupid remarks made by our religious studies instructors. We spent way too much time saving the world and far too little time studying.
One day, after a long stretch spending hours each day on all kinds of projects, we had a heart-to-heart. We just had to stop paying attention to the world and start paying attention to school. We reached a solemn agreement. No more cases. No more projects. No more discussions.
This was in the early afternoon. A couple of hours later, I.T. knocked on my door. He was only slightly sheepish, maybe not even that. Basically, it's as if we had never spoken that day and never reached an agreement. He says: A fire has burned down much of the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary. And what wasn't burned, is now about to be lost due to massive water damage. Books are water-logged.
What happened to our previous resolve, only a couple of hours old?
Did we even have that discussion?
We didn't even refer to it.
I.T. looked at me. I looked at him.
We had to save the water-logged, sacred tomes in the library. We had to do it.
Little did we know that we would miss a lot more than a few classes because of our new, next and biggest project yet.
I went down to JTS. The institution had a tower with a window at the top engraved (in Hebrew) with the words from Exodus, "The bush was burning but was not consumed." Ironically, from out of that window poured large and unending billows of smoke.