This week, the Bureau of Jewish Education’s Jewish Community Library packed up its 25,000-volume collection, left its Richmond District home of 30 years, and moved into a far larger site at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay. The goal: Erase once and for all the backhanded compliment of being “the best-kept secret in San Francisco.”
To top things off, the move — and a sizable augmentation in programming — was underwritten by the New York-based Keren Keshet foundation. The migration has been in the planning stages for months, and was legally finalized only last week.
According to BJE Executive Director Bob Sherman, the New York-based charitable foundation has awarded the Jewish Community Library a minimum of $1 million over the next decade.
“We’re coming out very nicely. I said to [Keren Keshet] if we’re going to move, it should be because it will expand our ability to program. What we want is to be able to do that, and they’ve given us a generous grant for that,” said Jonathan Schwartz, the JCL’s director.
“We’re developing library programs that will both bring people to the library to use it more and put the library out into the public, doing collaborations with other community institutions and perhaps even bookstores.”
The gift will allow the JCL to take advantage of a larger site within the high school at 1835 Ellis St. with expanded programming and a new position — programming director. The library is currently interviewing applicants for the position.
Unlike the JCL’s longtime home, the roughly 6,000-square-foot JCHS site is wheelchair and elevator accessible, and comes equipped with classrooms. Courtyards are outside the building, which is in the same complex as an auditorium, opening up the possibility for JCL-sponsored cultural events.
Sherman has brainstormed a number of potential JCL outreach projects aiming at young children, families or the emigre community, for starters. He also mentioned the “one book, one city” program, in which the library pushes one particular book and sets up readings, discussion sessions and forums revolving around the selected book.
“It creates a sense of community around the same book when you talk about it and hear about it at the same time,” he said. “That’s one concept we’re talking about.”
The former site on 14th Avenue and Balboa was never really intended to be a library, according to Schwartz. The JCL set up shop there 30 years ago, and it just kept growing.
“One of the great advantages of this change is this is a much larger space designed specifically for a library,” said Sherman.
“This provides the opportunity for creating new programming because we have the potential to expand our collection because of the greater space. That’s limited what we’ve done here.”
Putting the JCL quite literally at JCHS students’ fingertips is also a huge plus, say school administrators.
“This is making history, this partnership,” said Rabbi Ed Harwitz, JCHS’ dean. “There’s no other partnership of this kind in the U.S. For our community to have access to those types of resources, it really offers us an unprecedented opportunity to develop educational programs. Really, the sky’s the limit.”
In addition to the 25,0000-volume JCL, the school is hoping to amass a 13,000- to 15,000-volume secular library. JCHS’ library currently houses 450 volumes, with hopes to double that number by the end of summer.
In its old site, an estimated 7,000 patrons checked out roughly 700 books, compact discs, texts or other materials a month, according to Sherman and Schwartz. Neither will guess how much those numbers will increase, but they expect them to go up by quite a bit.
“It’s just the absolute full range of Jewish knowledge,” said Schwartz of his library. “From history to study of text to cookbooks, art and music to children’s books and books in Hebrew. It’s stuff you cannot get in the public library.”