Three score years and ten – marked by a special publication
By Alison Turner
The Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries (ABTAPL) was formed in 1956 as was Leo Baeck College in Finchley, North London. ABTAPL has produced a volume to celebrate, commemorate and look forwards and back over the last and next 70 years and more, Theological Libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland, which has just been published by Atla, The Americal Theological Library Association, and is available to buy from Amazon here.
My chapter in the new ABTAPL book is Jewish Progressive Libraries and Archives. It begins with an introduction to what had been happening for Jews in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and the effect these huge events had on Rabbis, Judaism and Jews in the UK.
I focus first on Leo Baeck College and how the College and its library were formed, then I consider the first Liberal Jewish Synagogue, also in North London. I give an overview of Progressive congregations since the 1950s and settle on Bristol and West Progressive Jewish Congregation for my final in-depth look at one synagogue, following this with a guide to Progressive Jewish archives.
I conclude with a look to the future; when I wrote there were separate Liberal and Reform movements, by the time of publication both have co-created one Progressive movement. The London Archive in Farringdon and the Anglo-Jewish Archives at the University of Southampton have some of the earlier stories. Along the way I explain how literacy has mattered to us as Jews, how Jewish Book Week grew and the Jewish Literary Foundation resulted. At a webinar to promote the book, we linked to these sites. Webinars in the Libraries of Faith will continue monthly online and are free and open to everyone. See www.abtapl.org.uk for further information.
I was joined at the webinar by Cassy Sachar, senior librarian of the Leo Baeck College. In February I attended the launch of the Lily Montagu Reading Room (pictured), a beautiful space transformed from where nuns used to pray, and subsequently a synagogue community met and prayed together. It is on the ground floor of the College, complementing the basement library, which will still have the majority of library stock, and offers many shelves and cosy alcoves of books, exhibition space, comfy sofas, and tables with pens and notepads. It is a huge step from the dusty basement where the college library began, with stock and staff from Germany.
Elsewhere in the anniversary volume, many Christian libraries are described, Cathedral libraries and work with a university, global impact and my own speciality and interest, classification systems. There are also geographical perspectives on Scotland and Ireland, alternative spiritualities and Buddhist libraries.
This is an important work, showing where this small specialist field is and where it has been and is going. There will be launches in Oxford, at ABTAPL’s 70th anniversary conference and in Edinburgh. I am pleased to have found others who share my interest in books, libraries and thinking, and prove that all faiths are indeed welcome.