Something funny happened to Rabbi Moshe Levin during his childhood that would affect his whole life. In Worcester, Massachusetts, where Levin grew up, his mother gave birth to a novel idea for educating her seven children.
“She would buy comic books for us, hoping this would lead us to read something more substantial,” said the rabbi of Bais Bezalel in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood. “Our home was filled with all kinds of comics. And my mother also loved reading the funnies in the (Worcester) Telegram and Gazette.”
Mrs. Levin’s imaginative scheme worked, at least for Moshe, her second child. “When she got us into reading, it opened a whole world for me,” he said.
Two months ago, just before Passover, Rabbi Levin launched his brainchild, The Jewish Family Library of Los Angeles, a community first, bursting with more than 2,000 volumes and new books on the way each month.
The urgency for creating a safe setting of solace, silence and inquisitiveness for curious Jewish children accelerated, the rabbi said, when the pandemic forced closure of the library at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
Levin thought to himself: Wouldn’t it be great if you had a space where children could walk in, where everything was pure?
“The Torah says a person is called ‘a tree in the field,’” Levin said. “When the tree is still at the seed stage, the tiniest change affects how that tree will grow.
“Similarly, if you give a child a taste of something that is wholesome and real and true, it guides the whole way that child will grow up.”
Besides the inspiration of the rabbi’s mother, there was an urgently pragmatic reason for organizing a library accessible to all in the community.
“You don’t always know what you are getting into when you go to a public library,” Levin said. “I used to take my [six] children [ages 6 to 17] to the Beverly Hills Public Library, which is beautiful. My children would want to take out books. I would say to them, ‘This one I approve of. This one I don’t approve of.’”
Now there is no more tug-of-war with the opening of The Jewish Family Library. Each book is “wholesome and pure.”
No need to bring money, either. Books are free. Each child may check out up to 10 books. A mother from Pasadena drove up the other day and returned 30 books her children had checked out. “Someone who knows about libraries will be impressed when walking in here,” Levin said. “The person can tell everything is done in a professional, methodical way and catalogued by the Dewey decimal system.”
Reflecting on his own experiences as a boy and man, Rabbi Levin’s eyes silently roamed the library, staffed by Tzipora Feige Jaffe, MLIS and Ph.D., and Levana Ekman, MLIS. “This is a wonderful time and place for parents and children to be together,” he said.
“I want a child to come in here and take a scent of the purity of the holy books here and bring that scent home.”
“I want a child to come in here and take a scent of the purity of the holy books here and bring that scent home.”
To underscore his belief that all children of the community will be drawn to his library, Levin envisions boys and girls arriving directly from McDonald’s and Burger King as well as from yeshivas.
The rabbi has a dream: “A child comes in from any background, religious, non-religious, has no knowledge of Judaism whatsoever. He says, ‘I am going to come here because it is a Jewish library, and I can learn whatever I want to learn.’”
Confident The Jewish Family Library of Los Angeles will succeed, Levin already is talking expansion, foreseeing a library that occupies the entirety upper floor of Bais Bezalel. Eventually, “the library will need a larger home,” he said.
Library hours: 3:30-6:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Sunday only. 8850 W. Pico Blvd. www.jewishfamilylibrary.com
