As the semester draws to a close, I’m prompted to reflect on some of its highlights, from a lively cooking class with food writer Leah Koenig to an affecting performance, at the Arena Stage, of Fiddler on the Roof.
Though profoundly satisfying, both experiences were trumped by an unexpectedly moving encounter in the library: The Kiev Collection’s display of “Hebrew Printing in the Arab and Islamic World.” Assembled by its knowledgeable and sage curator, Brad Sabin Hill, and timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the Middle East Librarians Association, this assortment of 30-odd books touched me to my very core.
I’m not sure why. Surely, it wasn’t their subject matter, which ranged from grammatical commentaries on the Bible to a liturgy for mourners. Nor was it a matter of their visual properties, for virtually all of the books on display bore little by way of illustration. And it certainly wasn’t the simple, honest and direct manner in which they were exhibited, row upon row on a wood table. No bells and whistles, no pyrotechnics, dazzled, or distracted, the eye.
But dazzled I was, all the same. Perhaps it had to do with their geographical origins, which spanned Istanbul and Beirut, Tunis and Salonika, Alexandria and Aden -- places which the Jews once called home, but are no more. Then again, maybe it had to do with the ways in which these humble texts managed, somehow, to survive the vicissitudes of Jewish history and to come to rest in Washington, D.C.
Whatever the reason, I left the inviting precincts of the Kiev Collection heartened -- and haunted -- by the presence of these books and the stories they carry.
