What if, despite the most sophisticated technology out there, the only real way to stay in touch with loved ones from the battlefield is old-school pen and paper? This is what Dudi Alon, a National Library employee serving as an IDF reservist, discovered. During the first month of the ground operation in Gaza, he found himself in an extreme situation: engaged in demanding combat and cut off from all means of communication. Handwritten letters were the only way he could remain connected to his beloved family waiting for him back home. The frequency of these letters, the uncertainty of what the next day would bring, and the very pages on which they were written all offer a rare glimpse into the complex reality and profound sacrifice of the soldiers on the ground. Read more about Dudi's experience along with the letters themselves, here: nlisrael.org/3U9OOGa

Spot the cat in the sukkah! This painting of a Jewish family celebrating Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles) in Germany dates all the way back to 1867! It is a work by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, one of the most famous Jewish artists of the 19th century, who established a reputation for himself throughout Europe with his paintings of scenes from the Bible as well as life in the Jewish ghetto. This image was reproduced and distributed on postcards in the early 20th century. The National Library of Israel collections

Created on the eve of a community’s destruction, the Lisbon Mahzor survived the horrors of persecution and expulsion, and then wandered the world as one of the few surviving treasures of a rare religious and artistic tradition. At some point along the way, its three volumes were separated. Only recently, thanks to the efforts of the National Library of Israel, have all three been reunited in Jerusalem, and now they have even been joyfully rejoined in digital form. Read more here: nlisrael.org/3SpAOHx

Was the Song of Songs inspired by ancient Egyptian love poems? Read more here: nlisrael.org/nature_love *** This article is presented in celebration of the European Days of Jewish Culture, in cooperation with the National Library of Israel's Gesher L'Europa (A Bridge to Europe) initiative. The 2026 EDJC theme is LOVE. @jewisheritage

Did you know that Martin Luther King planned to make a pilgrimage to Israel? Read the full story here: nlisrael.org/mlk1

A journey through the books that accompanied the growth of American Jewry: From small communities that depended on volumes shipped from Europe, to a bible translated into the language of Native American tribes, the earliest books printed in Hebrew in America, and the emergence of one of the world’s major centers of Jewish publishing. Read the article here: nlisrael.org/AmericanJewishB…

Is this possibly the book with the most misleading title in the world? “The Articella,” translates to “little art” in Latin, but it was in its time, one of the most important collections of scientific literature in the world - a key that could unlock ancient knowledge which in many senses had been lost. Its contents were remarkably cosmopolitan and anything but small. The "Little Art" presented not only an enormous body of medical knowledge (by the standards of the time; today it amounts to less material than an introductory course textbook on human anatomy), but also a remarkable new image of the physician. In the late Middle Ages, medicine started to become an organized field again, as ancient texts that had been translated from Greek into Arabic and then back into Latin began to resurface. It was the School of Medicine of Salerno along with the "Articella" that stood at the heart of this transformation. So, who was the Jewish scholar whose work occupies a significant portion of the manuscript – and who was accused of plagiarizing him? A new exhibition at the National Library of Israel offers a rare opportunity to get a glimpse of this nearly 800-year-old manuscript, preserved in the Library’s collections! Read more here: nlisrael.org/4g86toy