by Before October 7, Hana Cooper downloaded everything from daily news reports to rabbinic blog posts, saving them for posterity in the National Library of Israel’s online Israeli Internet and Jewish World Archive.
But within days of the Hamas-led attacks, Cooper began devoting his time to archiving violent images of the assault, many of them posted by the attackers themselves on digital platforms such as Telegram.
“It was surreal,” Cooper said in an interview. “I was working with the same tools, but in a completely different world. The war became all I did.”
Israel’s cultural sector had to reconstitute itself on October 7, when the nation mourned the approximately 1,200 people killed that day and the army called out hundreds of thousands of citizens.
As rockets from Gaza flew overhead, museums activated emergency protocols, quickly moving priceless paintings and historical treasures, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, to underground vaults. Cinemas and theaters were closed, in keeping with the somber national mood.
The National Library of Jerusalem, which had planned to open a new $225 million building on October 17, seemed likely to become another closed cultural institution.
The structure, a long limestone building designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron that took almost 10 years to build, is located in the administrative and cultural heart of the city, between the Supreme Court, the Hebrew University, the Museum of Israel and various government ministries. The library’s curved glass roof, which lets natural light into the large reading room, was designed not to obstruct views of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
Shortly after the October 7 attack, foreign construction crews still making last-minute adjustments were evacuated from Israel. The opening ceremony was cancelled. Builders left bolts and panels in the building’s softly lit, rounded hallways.
However, the library decided to open the building and has been welcoming visitors since October 29. “When the cannons are heard, the muses will not remain silent,” said Sallai Meridor, president of the library’s board of directors, playing a Soviet instrument. expression.
In part, they hope to create an island of sanity in a disturbed nation. “The library has been able to play a tremendously therapeutic role,” said Raquel Ukeles, head of library collections. She said many visitors have been evacuated from the country’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon, where communities are regularly attacked with rockets and shells, or reservists on leave from the Israeli army.
The library has helped supply mobile libraries that travel around the country. Their staff members have also helped establish a temporary school in the former National Library building for approximately 100 children displaced from their homes by fighting along the Lebanese border.
In the library’s reading room there are dozens of chairs, each with a book chosen to represent one of the hostages taken on October 7.
For young Avigail Idan, whose parents were killed when attackers invaded their home in Kibbutz Kfar Azza and who served 4 years in captivity, exhibition curator Dorit Gani chose “The Kiss That Disappeared,” a popular Israeli children’s book . For Gali Tarshansky, a 13-year-old girl whose dream is to open a shelter for abandoned dogs, Gani chose “Lassie Come-Home.” Both girls were released at the end of November.
Family and friends of some hostages have asked Gani to show books that have personal meaning to them. Noam Alon, whose girlfriend, Inbar Heiman, was kidnapped at the Nova Party music festival, asked to be represented by Erich Fromm’s “The Art of Loving,” which the two had been reading together in the weeks before the attack. On December 16, it was confirmed that Ms. Heiman had been killed while she was held captive in Hamas.
The library has also found new ways to fulfill its core mission as a guardian of collective national memory, as painful as this new chapter may be.
Library workers are rescuing and digitizing local archives from devastated communities that were invaded on October 7. And employees like Ms. Cooper are collecting and archiving WhatsApp conversations, in recognition of their documentary value. At Kibbutz Be’eri, site of some of the worst atrocities on October 7, one of the most reliable records of the day’s events are messages sent in the community’s group chat.
The library’s collection team has also provided guidance, expertise, and a long-term home for several foundational documentation efforts. These include a group of Ph.D. students who took oral testimonies from survivors and technology developers who used artificial intelligence to assess the condition of hostages, examining hundreds of hours of video.
Ultimately, this growing corpus will be essential in helping Israelis make sense of the moment, according to Ms. Ukeles.
“I think the library has become a symbol of hope,” he said. “A reminder, in this current nightmare, of what we are here for and what this society is trying to build.”
