Free People Read Freely

Banned Books Week:
September 29 – October 8, 2007

Why would anyone think that banning books serves any purpose?!
Jews have been on the receiving end of censorship, prohibitions and book burning throughout history: from the censoring of the Talmud by the Catholic Church, to self-imposed censorship of books and passages deemed offensive to others, to pyres of Jewish books burnt in public by the Nazis.
Deemed as “people of the book” a long time ago, we have certainly lived up to this image and reputation, and we want to believe that we would never engage in such ignorant practices. So how many of us allow open access to Hitler’s Mein Kampf ?, to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? To Holocaust Denial literature? To diatribes against ritual circumcision?

This week we are celebrating the freedom to read at the Frances-Henry Library.
We invite you to look at the modest exhibit of literature about the subject and some “samples” in the reference area.
If you can’t make it – take a look at the links below. All of them are informative and thought provoking.
Mo’adim Le-Simhah – Happy Sukkot

yaffa


http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/indexpage.htm

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html

http://www.booksatoz.com/censorship/banned.htm

http://www.cbldf.org/

http://www.st-charles.lib.il.us/arl/arl_banned.htm

http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm