Piotr Nazaruk

Wonderful developments have occurred in 2023 regarding our project aiming to digitally reunite the famous library of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. We have uncovered documents and press reports from the 1940s proving that the library of the Lublin Yeshiva – once the largest religious Jewish library in Poland holding around thirty thousand volumes – was not burned during the Second World War, as claimed by many sources, but rather scattered around the world.

https://teatrnn.pl/wystawy/the-library-of-the-lublin-yeshiva/

A few years ago we knew about only five surviving volumes from the Lublin Yeshiva. After discovering one hundred and thirty of them in the holdings of the Jewish Historical Institute, a laborious work has begun to discover the whereabouts of the rest of the collection. After patiently examining thousands of old books in search of the Lublin Yeshiva stamps in libraries around the world, the numbers have started to steadily grow. In December of 2022 our catalogue of identified books with the Lublin Yeshiva stamps had approximately five hundred records. In December of 2023 the number of identified and catalogued books had risen to nearly eight hundred fifty, a more than fifty percent increase from the year before! 

In 2023 we uncovered an additional two hundred books with the Lublin Yeshiva Library stamps in the holdings of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Among them, a true gem—a 1545 Venice edition of Eliyah ha-Mizrahi which includes one of the oldest Hebrew maps of the Land of Israel. Among other discoveries we identified or were informed about books from former holdings of the Lublin Yeshiva held today by the Jewish Museum in Prague in Czechia, Herzog College in Jerusalem, University of Pennsylvania, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, Yeshivat Har Etzion, the Jewish Community of Gdańsk and many private collections.

^{The map of the Land of Israel as depicted in Eliyah ha-Mizrahi from 1545.}

In June of 2023 I had the great pleasure of meeting a philanthropist, former diplomat and a member of the British royal family, George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews. During his visit to Lublin, the earl had only one request—to meet with me and hear about our Lublin Yeshiva Library project! To my great surprise it turned out that the earl easily reads the Hebrew alphabet and is a keen reader of Polish literature (in original Polish!).

^{Inspecting books with the Lublin Yeshiva Library stamps together with George Windsor, currently 42. in the line of succession to the British throne.}

In December of 2023, a few days after Hanukkah and just before Christmas, Meir Bulka of Israel entrusted me with three 19th century books with stamps of the Lublin Yeshiva Library. “It is not a gift—he declared—the place of these books is Lublin.” I could not imagine a more touching end of the year—to stand in the splendidly renovated synagogue of the former Lublin Yeshiva holding in my own hands three old sforim that have returned home after a decades-long journey.

^{Meir Bulka entrusts me with three Lublin Yeshiva books in the synagogue at the Lublin Yeshiva.}

It is just the beginning of our work! The year ahead will surely surprise us even more, and we have grand plans for our project. For April we are preparing a huge surprise related to the turbulent history of the Lublin Yeshiva (stay tuned!). In May of 2024, during the 100th anniversary of placing the cornerstone of the Yeshiva, we plan to arrange a new space in the Yeshiva building to display the ten books from the original pre-war library that have returned to Lublin. And, above all else, we plan further expansion of our catalogue and, hopefully, finding more books bearing stamps of the Lublin Yeshiva Library. 
On behalf of our tiny team of researchers and enthusiasts of the fascinating history of the Lublin Yeshiva Library, I wish you all the best in 2024!

If you would like to financially support our efforts of digitally restoring the library of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, please donate via our PayPal.

Sincerely,

Piotr Nazaruk
Ośrodek „Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” Lublin