'Though Your Beginning Be Small'

In "Though Your Beginning Be Small," Jason Kalman addresses how the library of Hebrew Union College, then a small Midwestern institution, built a monumental repository of Jewish knowledge. Kalman offers a detailed account of the individuals and the books who shaped the life of the Library and the community that used it from the first donation in 1873 until Adolph Oko's appointment as librarian in 1907.

The idea of founding a library in the mid-1870s in the United States was hardly novel in and of itself, but by virtue of intended contents, scope, and mission, Issac Mayer Wise's vision for creating a library was distinct. In contrast to its peer institutions that grew through acquiring massive private collections, HUC's library emerged through countless small donations--individual books plus modest personal libraries gifted by rabbis, congregants, and Jewish intellectuals across America. Each volume represented a personal connection to Jewish learning along with a vote of confidence in Wise's bold aim to create not merely a school library but rather a central repository for Jewish scholarship in Cincinnati, which housed America's second-largest Jewish community during that period.

Kalman raises fascinating questions concerning the people who built this early collection book by book. Who were these donors who chose to entrust their family treasures to Cincinnati as opposed to institutions in New York or Philadelphia? How did immigrant families decide which precious Jewish books to bring across the Atlantic? Moreover, what compelled them subsequently to donate these treasured heirlooms? What motivated Samuel Adler, former rabbi of New York's Temple Emanu-El, to send his 1,400-volume collection to HUC instead of the Jewish Theological Seminary in his own city?

The anwers to these questions concern more than an institutional history; they constitute a window into American Jewish book culture of the late 19th century, revealing the social networks and personal connections that transformed a modest collection into a world-class library.