President, PM lay cornerstone for new national library

Trowel in hand, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin help lay the cornerstone for the new National Library of Israel Tuesday, under a tent at the corner of Ruppin Boulevard and Eliezer Kaplan Street.

The cement stone, still wet during the ceremony, is set on this sloped, triangular plot adjacent to the Knesset and across from the Israel Museum, at the meeting point of the city’s cultural and national institutions.

A copy of the National Library Charter, signed in 2007 and declared as the start of this rejuvenation process, is buried under the wet cement.

“The concept of renewal of the library will allow us to place the National Library in the proper perspective of the country’s cultural fabric,” says David Blumberg, chairman of the National Library. “The National Library will be the most important cultural institution in Israel and the Jewish world.”

Netanyahu announces that he intends to hand over the archives of his historian father, Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, who specialized in medieval Spanish Jewry, to the library. Rivlin also says that he would give the library the writings of his father, Prof. Yosef Rivlin, a historian of the Muslim world.

— Jessica Steinberg