President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who are accustomed to receiving symbolic gifts at public ceremonies – both donated rare books on Tuesday at the cornerstone-laying for the National Library, being built in Jerusalem opposite the Knesset and Israel Museum.
Both men are the sons of professors, and both gifted a literary treasure that had belonged to his father. Rivlin presented a Farsi manuscript of poems and liturgical texts by biblical commentator and kabbalist Rabbi Israel Ben Moshe Najara. Netanyahu gifted his father Benzion Netanyahu’s archive on the Jews of Spain and conversos.
When completed in 2020, he said, Israel’s National Library will be on par with the Library of Congress in Washington, and the British Library in London.
Netanyahu reminisced about the many hours in his youth he spent at the National Library’s current building at Givat Ram, and recalled how much more time his father spent there.
The $200-million National Library is being funded by Yad Hanadiv (The Rothschild Foundation) whose chairman Lord Jacob Rothschild was present along with several members of his family, and the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Fund. The Gottesmans also had a family delegation present.
For more than a century, the Rothschild family has supported scores of projects in Israel and pre-state Palestine.