Books Project 2024: BHC Library Comeback
By Lynn Alster and Debbie Simon
Reshelved books may be found throughout BHC.
After 100 years of book donations, BHC held a sprawling collection of English, Yiddish and Hebrew volumes. Board member Debbie Simon asked her friends, Lynn and Jitzchak Alster, members who live in Israel and spend their summers in Bethlehem, to take on Books Project 2024.
It turned into a humungous endeavor of more than 120 volunteer hours (not that we’re counting or anything). After careful review, each book met a different fate. Among them were: getting reshelved throughout the synagogue; being offered to congregants; going a long distance for donation to the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., the Yiddish program in the Cornell University Jewish Studies Department in Ithaca, N.Y., or a religious bookstore in Brooklyn; staying closer to home at the Little Free Library at the Littleton Food Co-op; and becoming designated for ceremonial burial.
Check out this Q & A with Lynn about this amazing project.
Q: Would you like to explain how it came about that you two, who traveled to Bethlehem from afar to enjoy the great outdoors, spent more than 120 hours indoors on BHC Books Project 2024?
A: Very good question. We were initially asked to lend a hand to figure out what torn materials require Jewish burial. As we started to review the small pile there, we realized that there’s a great deal more to be done to clear away the dust and reveal the educational, fun and enriching book collection at BHC to its congregants and visitors. We gingerly shifted through shelves, gleaning the wheat from the so-called chaff, surprisingly making new acquaintances along the way. We were impressed by how frequently the valuable volunteer members of BHC drift into and out of the building - each with his or her own task for the community’s benefit: kiddushim, building maintenance, Jewish film festival, shabbat prayers, Sounds in the Sanctuary…
The library boasts a refreshed kids’ corner.
So, who needed sunshine on mountain paths when we could enjoy plenty of exercise hopping up and down the synagogue stairs with heavy boxes, crawling under the pews to extricate hidden gems, and waving arms madly at colonies of cobwebs and other unidentifiable personages (alive or not)? Luckily, we understood how to decipher the trilingual collection (English, Hebrew and Yiddish), so we also enjoyed a bit of intellectual exercise categorizing each book. One thing led to another and voila – we spent lots of time with the book collection in the astoundingly beautiful BHC chapel.
Q: What did you learn or gain from Project BHC 2024?
A: So much! Going through the books means marveling at the various thinkers and contributors as well as learning about the community and educational interests that the BHC congregation has contained within its walls over its lifetime. The richness of the collection is astonishing; it contains so much knowledge, thought, humor, history and Jewish soul! Each book has its own charm, and each author brings his/her perspective for the fullness of Klal Yisrael. As for our modest contribution: If we managed to enable anyone better access to the fabulous world of Jewish thought – it was totally worthwhile!
Q: And so what about Project BHC 2025?
A: We are definitely thinking about it….
Photos, From left: Ellen Fisch spearheading the donation to Cornell University; Congregants are welcome to borrow books; Lynn (far left) and Jitzchak (second from right) donating volumes to the Yiddish Book Center;
The newly reorganized kiddush room library shelves, with BHC’s collection of talmudic, prayer, and other rich texts.
Photos by Lynn Alster, Debbie Simon