My pen is my harp and my lyre;
My library is my garden and my orchard.

–Yehuda Halevi, c. 1075–1141

Hours

Main Branch
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
Sun. noon-4 PM
Mon. 11 AM-5:30 PM
Tues. 11 AM-5:30 PM
Thurs. 11 AM-5:30 PM

Pushcart Branch at the OFJCC
3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto
Wed. 8:30 AM-1 PM

Contact

415.567.3327
info@jewishcommunitylibrary.org

For more than seventy years, the Jewish Community Library has offered the Bay Area a place to discover and engage with the riches of Jewish thought, culture, and history.

New Arrivals

A Gift of Many Colors : by Proscio, Tony
At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf : by Ison, Tara
Desires / by Dropkin, Celia
A Taytsh Manifesto : by Zaritt, Saul Noam
A Reason to See You Again : by Attenberg, Jami
Occupied Words : by Pollin-Galay, Hannah
Sacred Places Tell Tales : by Meital, Yoram
Journey Through the Spanish Civil War : by Shneiderman, S. L
The Shochet : by Goldenshteyn, Pinkhes-Dov
Mixed-Up Mooncakes / by Matula, Christina
Stories My Father Told Me : by Treisman, Dvora
The Prison Minyan / by Stone, Jonathan
Goyhood : by Fenton, Reuven
For Times Such As These : by Katz, Ariana
Olive Days : by Emerson, Jessica Elisheva
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern : by Loigman, Lynda Cohen
Hugging My Father
Gitty and Kvetch / by Pritchard, Caroline Kusin
The Singer Sisters / by Seltzer, Sarah
Fire In the Canyon : by Gumbiner, Daniel
Goodbye, Eastern Europe : by Mikanowski, Jacob
Between Borders : by Brinkmann, Tobias
Blessings Beyond the Binary :
Displaced Persons : by Leegant, Joan
My Father
O
Globetrotter : by Jacob, Mark
The Radical Isaac : by Mahalel, Adi
The Light of Seven Days : by Adams, River
Tablets Shattered : by Leifer, Joshua
The Place of All Possibility : by Allen, Adina
Daughter of History : by Suleiman, Susan Rubin
Between Paradise & Earth : by Stone, Nomi & Hankins, Luke
Jezebel / by Barnard, Megan
A Place to Hide / by Balson, Ronald H
Songs for the Brokenhearted : by Tsabari, Ayelet
Jews Under Tsars and Communists : by Weinberg, Robert
On A Chariot of Fire : by Lyons, Erica
What Jewish Looks Like / by Kleinrock, Liz
Ain

Upcoming Events

Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America, with Rafael Medoff and Ruth LandyVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event, co-presented by New Lehrhaus and the JFCS Holocaust Center. A compelling nonfiction graphic novel written by Rafael Medoff and illustrated by Dean Motter, Whistleblowers is the true story of courageous individuals who risked their careers—or their lives—to confront the unfolding Holocaust. Figures include future U.S. Senator Alan […] ...
Sun, Nov 17
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

In My Ancestors’ Shoes: Getting Dressed in the Tenements, 1881, with ViIn-Person

Click here to register for this free in-person program, co-presented by New Lehrhaus. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  Vi of the YouTube channel SnappyDragon will offer a hands-on demonstration of how a working-class Jewish immigrant woman would […] ...
Sun, Nov 24
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Soviet-Born: The Afterlives of Migration in Jewish American Fiction, with Karolina KrasuskaVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event. In 2010, when The New Yorker published a list of twenty writers under the age of forty who were “key to their generation,” it included five Jewish-identified writers, two of whom—American Gary Shteyngart and Canadian David Bezmozgis—were Soviet-born. This publicity came after nearly a decade of […] ...
Sun, Dec 08
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Drop-In Book Discussion: Living with Our Dead by Delphine Horvilleur, Facilitated by Jim Van BuskirkIn-Person

Join us for an in-person discussion at the Jewish Community Library. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy. This event is co-sponsored by Sinai Memorial Chapel. To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of Living with Our Dead at […] ...
Sun, Dec 08
2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Tasting Flight: poems, with Yiskah RosenfeldIn-Person

To register for this free in-person program, click here. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  The poems in this collection are confidently crafted, spiritually and emotionally insightful and precise, and intelligent all at once. Yiskah Rosenfeld does not […] ...
Sun, Dec 15
2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Book Launch: From OY to JOY, with Shulamit SofiaIn-Person

To register for this free in-person program, click here. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  “From Oy to Joy is a heartwarming companion offering practical wisdom and a dose of laughter for life’s challenging journey into the next […] ...
Sun, Dec 15
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Jewish Calcutta Through Music and Memory, with Rahel MusleahVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual program co-presented by New Lehrhaus. Although very few Jews remain there today, Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, was the site of a thriving Jewish community. Jewish merchants and traders from present-day Iraq and Syria came to the city during the period of the British Raj, beginning in […] ...
Sun, Dec 22
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Translating Hebrew, Translating Israel with Jessica CohenVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event. Jessica Cohen has translated the work of many major Israeli writers, including Amos Oz, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon, and Etgar Keret. In 2017 she shared the prestigious Man Booker International Prize with David Grossman for her translation of the novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar. […] ...
Tue, Jan 07
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

The Chief Rabbi’s Funeral: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Antisemitic Riot, with Scott D. SeligmanVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual program, co-presented by New Lehrhaus. On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the procession crossed Sheriff Street, where the […] ...
Sun, Jan 12
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Between the Bridge and the Barricade: Jewish Translation in Early Modern Europe, with Iris Idelson-SheinVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event. Between the Bridge and the Barricade explores how translations of non-Jewish texts into Jewish languages impacted Jewish culture, literature, and history from the sixteenth century into modern times. Offering a comprehensive view of early modern Jewish translation, Iris Idelson-Shein charts major paths of textual migration from […] ...
Sun, Jan 26
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Stolpersteine: A Sacred Homage to my Ancestors and a Gift of Repair, with Ben WoodVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event, co-presented by the JFCS Holocaust Center. Visual artist Ben Wood will discuss his family’s Stolpersteine journey, which took place in March 2024, during which they visited Berlin and nearby towns Seelow and Strausberg to lay Stolpersteine for his grandparents’ families who were victims of the Holocaust. […] ...
Sun, Feb 02
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Theodore Seixas Solomons: The Jewish San Franciscan Who Inspired North America’s Most Famous FootpathIn-Person

Click here to register for this free in-person program co-presented by New Lehrhaus. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  The John Muir Trail runs 212 miles along the crest of California’s High Sierra, from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney. […] ...
Sun, Feb 09
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Yiddish San Francisco, with Howard FreedmanVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual program made possible by the support of the Workers Circle / Arbeter Ring of Northern California and co-presented by Klezcalifornia and New Lehrhaus. The history of San Francisco Jewry tends to be told in terms dominated by the experience of Jews from German-speaking lands who settled in […] ...
Thu, Feb 13
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom
No event found!

Main Branch

Location
1835 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Hours
Sundays noon to 4 PM
Mondays 11 AM to 4 PM
Thursdays 11 AM to 4 PM

Palo Alto Pushcart

Location
Oshman Family JCC
3921 Fabian Way
Palo Alto, CA 94303

Hours
Wednesdays 8:30 AM to 1 PM

Main Branch

Location
1835 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Hours
Sundays noon to 4 PM
Mondays 11 AM to 4 PM
Thursdays 11 AM to 4 PM

Palo Alto Pushcart

Location
Oshman Family JCC
3921 Fabian Way
Palo Alto, CA 94303

Hours
Wednesdays 8:30 AM to 1 PM