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From: alba toscano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [ha-Safran]: Jews buying books
I don't doubt that Jews might buy books, but what
kind? Judaica-type or the Nancy
Drew Goes Camping-type?
I'm feeling a little weird and expansive this
morning so bear with me a second (or
hit the delete button). Book-buying by jewish
persons has to be a country specific
phenomena. Just off the top of my head, if
someone semi-literate lives in Israel
there's a good chance that they're jewish and
that they'll keep right on being so
no matter whether they buy the former or the
latter type of book. So it comes as
little surprise that jews in Israel buy a lot of books.
Let's go with the country-specific former-type-of books: Judaica. Do jewish
persons buy judaica in Spain for example?
Someone sent me an article in english from some jewishy american newspaper
bulletin whatever, written by some
american-jewish-american tourists who spent 47
minutes in Barcelona last summer: "In Barcelona the jewish community has a
publishing company." Wrong.
Some 35 years ago Rafa and Elisa, a nice catholic
couple, got into the business of
editing original material written mostly by
cristians about the spanish medievel
and urban-legended jews. They also took to
distributing books largely from Israel.
They barely eke out a living. Rafa told me once
that he got into the business to
help out the jewish community but had he known
that his possible jewish customers
would blow it all off and he'd end up selling
almost exclusively to cristians he
would have never taken the bait.
As far as I can tell, the jewish community
(whatever that is from a spain point of
view, I'll keep you posted if I ever figure it out), can't be bothered with
actually buying this stuff and outside of the occasional re-issue of a WIZO
cookbook originally slapped together by the ladies's league at the orthodox
community in Madrid in 1984 marketed for internal
consumuption, there just isn't
anything out there that jewish people are going to lay down soft cash on a hard
barrelhead for. Like who needs another cookbook anyway?
>From personal experience, if we're talking
jewish persons buying jewishyish books,
there's not a single book with
jewish-type information that I have ever tried to
sell that a jewish person actually bought willingly. Maybe it's because they're
all immigrants and books are heavy when you're on
the move. In Madrid, some jewish
people have a used/new mail-order sort of business called Hebraica. And then
there's "Raices" the only jewish-y-ish magazine
in Spain. Hebraica tells me they
sell stuff.... but mostly to cristians.
Many cristians who buy jewishy books later donate
them to the La Javurá library.
Love those guys. When they ask me for suggestions about what they should buy, I
take a quick look into the La Javura library to
see what we might be missing. Sure
wish some cristian would buy a complete set of the Talmud in spanish.
Building a judaica library in Spain and having a blast
Besos de Valencia
Alba Toscano
Sinagoga conservador/masorti "La Javura"
http://www.uscj.org/world/valencia
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