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A new children’s book will depict the Jewish Theological Seminary’s devastating 1966 library fire — and how its neighbors responded
(JTA) — Just before locking down in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s book author Caroline Kusin Pritchard was waiting to pick up her two toddlers from preschool at Congregation Beth Am in Palo Alto, California, when she saw a thin volume poking out of a shelf in the synagogue library.
The 56-page book, called “Fire! The Library is Burning,” by Rabbi Barry Cytron, detailed a historical event she had never heard of before: the 1966 library fire at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights.
The fire was a devastating event for the seminary, the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism. It destroyed some 70,000 books and 40 Torahs in the library’s collection, some of which had been saved from Poland. No people were hurt and few rare books were burned, but because of the way the library was constructed, in a windowless tower, the only way to put it out was to dump water from above, resulting in sweeping damage even to volumes that escaped the flames.
What grabbed Kusin Pritchard’s attention was not the fire itself, but the way New Yorkers who lived and worked near the school responded to it — volunteering to evacuate books from the library and protect them from lasting damage.
That response is the focus of her upcoming children’s book, “The Keeper of Stories,” announced this week and due out in the fall of 2024. The episode, Kusin Pritchard said, feels all the more meaningful at a time when activists and local governments across the country are banning books — including some about the Holocaust — and restricting them from school library shelves.
“I just never thought a story about saving books would feel radical in 2023,” she said. “People are proactively going out of their way to strip books from public libraries and school shelves.”
The message of “The Keeper of Stories,” Kusin Pritchard added, is that “it didn’t matter to people what necessarily was in the books. They just knew there was inherent value and the story is being told and to save and protect books more generally, like these sacred gatekeepers of our humanity.”
The book is on the road to publication at a time of significant change for the JTS library, a large and storied institution with 400,000 volumes that includes a notable collection of rare Jewish books. The library downsized its space after a 2015 real estate deal and has more recently drawn scrutiny for auctioning some of its rare books. The longtime lead librarian who led the efforts to recover from the fire, Menahem Schmelzer, died last year.
Schmelzer, a Holocaust survivor born in Hungary who served as JTS’ head librarian from 1964 to 1987, spoke to Kusin Pritchard about his recollection of the fire, which happened to occur on his birthday.
“He was able to share just gorgeous, textured memories about what the experience was like for him,” she recalled.
“There’s a refrain throughout about ‘the keeper of stories,’” Kusin Pritchard added, referencing the book’s title. “This idea of, ‘who are the keepers of stories?’ Is it the building involved? Is it the pages of the book?”
Kusin Pritchard is the author of other children’s books with Jewish themes. “Gitty and Kvetch,” released in 2021, features a character who is always complaining; “Where is Poppy?”, out next year, is about a girl’s first Passover after her grandfather’s death. The new book, meant for readers in elementary school, will be illustrated by Selina Alko, who is Jewish and has previously illustrated books about interfaith holiday celebrations and the effort to save Czech children from the Nazis.
“The Keeper of Stories” will depict the steps that JTS’s neighbors took to save the books that didn’t burn. They formed an impromptu chain to pass books out of the library, pack them in boxes and, in turn, clear the boxes out to make more space for additional evacuated books. Volunteers also mobilized to place paper towels between each page of books soaked by the firehoses that were in danger of growing mold.
“These volunteers came from across the city and dried these books with paper towels and you can still see the places where they taped them and glued them back together on some of these actual books, on the pages.” Kusin Pritchard said. “Their stories still kind of exist in person.”
Initially, Kusin Pritchard wrote the draft from the perspective of the person who came up with the idea of using paper towels to preserve the books — an effort that caused a run on the towels nearby. But she soon realized that the story was about more than one individual’s efforts to save the contents of a library, so none of the characters is named.
“This wasn’t about this one person,” Kusin Pritchard said. “It was about how everyone came together. Preschoolers, students down the street, the pastors, the company that heard about this and sent paper towels, or General Foods who had these freeze dryers and they sent their food scientists to try and freeze dry the books. It was a collective.”
Kusin Pritchard said she usually writes lighter fare, but as the parent of three young children — 6, 4 and 2 years old — she said she isn’t worried about frightening readers.
“Kids can take on and handle a lot more than we give them credit for,” she said.
She also hopes to show her young readers that they can play a role in safeguarding books, too.
“In a world where book banning seems more and more normalized,” she said, “a story about saving books feels really resonant.”
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The post A new children’s book will depict the Jewish Theological Seminary’s devastating 1966 library fire — and how its neighbors responded appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Providence voters pass ballot initiative that could lead to divestment of city funds from Israel
(JTA) — Voters in Providence, Rhode Island, have approved a ballot measure that could result in the city divesting public funds from Israel, according to local media, in a major victory for the Israel boycott movement.
In a major victory for the Israel boycott movement, voters in Providence, Rhode Island, have approved a ballot measure that could result in the city divesting public funds from Israel, according to local media.
With 81 of 82 polling locations partially reported, the Rhode Island Board of Elections tallied 75% voting to approve the measure versus 25% rejecting. Both the Rhode Island Current and the Boston Globe report the measure was approved.
“We are overjoyed that the city of Providence has voted — by more than a 3 to 1 margin — to divest our collective dollars from support for genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Lex Rofeberg, who runs the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound and was an organizer with the Providence divestment initiative, told JTA. “This historic moment can serve as an example for other cities around the country hoping to align their investments with their values.”
The ordinance calls for the capital city to refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.” Though the ballot language does not mention Israel by name, it was heavily supported by local pro-Palestinian groups and opposed by some Jewish and pro-Israel groups.
A representative for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island previously told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group would explore legal options to challenge the ballot measure in the event that it passed.
The vote makes Providence the largest municipality yet to vote in favor of some form of Israel divestment, following the lead of Somerville, Massachusetts, whose voters approved a nonbinding divestment measure last year. Providence is home to an estimated 15,000 Jews, or around 7% of its population. Progressive Jewish groups, including the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, were among the ballot measure’s advocates.
The city’s mayor, Brett Smiley, a pro-Israel Democrat who converted to Judaism while in office, lost his primary to a democratic socialist, an early indicator of which way the divestment vote would go.
Activist initiatives to challenge U.S. financial aid to Israel have picked up steam in the years since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and ensuing Gaza war. On the morning of Election Day, President Donald Trump, who described aid to Israel as a political liability, announced the U.S. would end nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of the year.
The post Providence voters pass ballot initiative that could lead to divestment of city funds from Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Republican Lawler concedes to Democrat Conley in fierce battle for Jewish vote in NYC suburbs
(JTA) — Republican congressman Mike Lawler has conceded to Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a former national security official, after competing fiercely for Jewish voters in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.
Lawler has been a staunchly pro-Israel member since joining Congress in 2023, and was endorsed by the Republican Jewish Coalition and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
Conley was endorsed by the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel, and has said she supports Israel while opposing the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
Lawler, who is Catholic, has deep ties to the district’s large Orthodox Jewish population, and touted their support recently when asked about the neck-and-neck polling.
Both Lawler and Conley have tried tying their opponent to polarizing figures in their respective parties. Lawler has asserted that Conley, a moderate, will not separate herself from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and particularly New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has a lower favorability rating outside the city. Conley denounced Mamdani’s statement on the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack after Lawler challenged her to do so during a debate.
Conley, meanwhile, has tied Lawler to President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a rubber stamp for Trump’s legislative priorities.
The post Republican Lawler concedes to Democrat Conley in fierce battle for Jewish vote in NYC suburbs appeared first on The Forward.
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In early LA mayoral results, Karen Bass holds slim lead over Nithya Raman, who sparred with DSA on Israel
Early returns in the Los Angeles mayoral election showed incumbent Karen Bass with a slim lead over Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose comments on Israel became a flashpoint in the race.
The first batch of results — totaling about 500,000 votes — showed Bass leading Raman, 50.8% to 49.2%.
The final outcome may not be known until Wednesday or later, a common occurrence in tight California races due to the preponderance of mail-in ballots. Nearly 90% of California voters did so by mail in the June primary.
But if the primary results are any indication, Bass’ lead may evaporate as more votes are counted.
In the June 2 open primary — a system in which the top two vote-getters from any party advance to a runoff — Raman trailed a Republican, Spencer Pratt, by eight points for second place behind Bass. She won the ensuing batches of mail-in ballots, but did not pass Pratt until June 7. She ultimately surpassed him by more than four percentage points.
Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has clashed with the organization — and frustrated many of her Jewish constituents — while trying to strike a balance on Israel. She has called the war in Gaza a genocide, but declined to adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions platform — a stance that led the DSA to consider expelling her.
Bass, a mainstream Democrat who served six terms in Congress before running for mayor in 2022, entered the race as a historically unpopular incumbent, largely thanks to her response to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. Raman endorsed Bass prior to declaring her own candidacy on the last day to enter the race, a move Bass has characterized as a personal betrayal.
The polls swung back and forth in the weeks leading up to the election. Bass, who won most labor endorsements, was leading until September, when one poll sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Raman ahead by 11 points with a third of voters still undecided. A follow-up poll by the Times last week showed the two in a dead heat.
Unlike many other DSA candidates up for election across the country on Tuesday, Raman, an urban policy wonk who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was 6, never made Israel a focal point of her campaign. Instead, she focused more on housing, homelessness and budget policy.
But her membership in the DSA, an interview she granted Hasan Piker during the primary and the genocide comments dogged her anyway, especially among Jewish Angelenos.
Raman, after publicly condemning the DSA’s anti-Israel statements after Oct. 7, sponsored a resolution for a ceasefire and return of hostages in March 2024, disappointing mainstream Jewish groups who called the motion one-sided. Then, during the primary, Raman told Piker she believed the Gaza war was a genocide and that Israel was an apartheid state. She also said she would not seek the endorsement of pro-Israel Democratic party groups as she had in 2024.
Her record on Israel seemed likely to come up when Raman participated in the candidate forum for Jewish voters Sept. 29. But Raman struggled to get through answers about the DSA, Piker and especially genocide and BDS — which she called a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” — leading to loud audience groans. During Bass’ turn on stage, the mayor said she did not support BDS and did not believe the war in Gaza was a genocide.
Mail-in voters historically skew to the left, and the primary vote may offer a preview of the margin Raman might need.
In that election, about 58% of the total votes were tallied election night, when Bass led Raman 36.5% to 21%. Raman got the biggest share of the ensuing ballot batches, beating Bass by about five percentage points.
The post In early LA mayoral results, Karen Bass holds slim lead over Nithya Raman, who sparred with DSA on Israel appeared first on The Forward.
