Hi there In response to Andrea Rapp's query about synagogue libraries, I would like to comment that Synagogue libraries would seem to be a peculiarly North American phenomenon. The synagogue library in the United States fulfills the function of a Jewish community library. In South Africa, which has a single centralised Jewish communal organisation, the Jewish community libraries are organised under the aegis of the South African Zionist Federation, rather than by separate synagogues. We have a very active community library, the Gitlin Library, part of the Western Province Zionist Council in Cape Town, which has about 25 000 volumes. Johannesburg also has a community library organised by the S.A. Zionist Federation, at their communal headquarters, known as Beyachad, in the suburb of Raedene in Johannesburg. It shares premises with the very valuable communal archives of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.
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