The Schocken Library Salon

The Schocken Library in Jerusalem, after opening its doors in 1938, housed the Institute for Hebrew poetry along with the largest private collection of books in the country.   It was also a social gathering point for those who otherwise felt in exile from Europe.   There were few other venues that could compete with the Schocken library in terms of size and comfort.  And it was one of the few places in town where the Jerusalem’s finest writers and scholars, mostly refugees from Germany, gave public lectures on themes of general interest.  

Elsa Lasker-Schuler, Gershom Scholem, the philosopher Hugo Bergmann, and the literary critic Werner Kraft gave talks at the library. One of the highlights of 1939 was Schocken’s own lecture on the fiction of the eighteenth-century German romantic writer Jean Paul.