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

This Haggadah Is the Way : by Bodek, Martin
Unalone : by Jacobs, Jessica
Shanim ṭovot / by Arad, Maya
Nosh : by Siva, Micah
Maimonides : by Manguel, Alberto
Jewish Education / by Kelman, Ari Y
Blessed Hands : by Halpern, Frume
Herod the Great : by Goodman, Martin
Tap Dancing On Everest : by Zieman, Mimi
These Words : by Solovy, Alden T
The Last Words of Moses / by Goodman, Micah
Abraham Joshua Heschel : by Zelizer, Julian E
Books Like Sapphires : by Brener, Ann
How to Find Your Way In the Dark / by Miller, Derek B
Israel
Uncomfortable Conversations With A Jew / by Acho, Emmanuel
Acts of Resistance / by Carrillo, Dominic
Elie Wiesel : by Berger, Joseph
Your Presence Is Mandatory / by Vasilyuk, Sasha
Mazaltob : by Bendahan, Blanche
Housemates : by Eisenberg, Emma Copley
Qohelet : by Fisch, Menachem
Shalom Elohim! / by Levinzon, Leonid
Lublin / by Wilkinson, Manya
Mother Doll : by Apekina, Katya
Judaism Is About Love : by Held, Shai
Arabs and Israelis : by Said Aly, Abdel Monem
Carrying A Big Schtick : by Mora, Miriam Eve
Jewish Paideia : by Zurawski, Jason M
A Brutal Design / by Solomon, Zachary C
For You When I Am Gone : by Leder, Steven Z
Through the Morgue Door : by Brull-Ulmann, Colette
God In Her Ruffled Dress / by Bernstein, Lisa
Henrietta Szold : by Klagsbrun, Francine
Emmanuel Levinas
Matshiḳ, Metoraf, Ule-Gamre Metsiʼuti by Rakover, Sam S
Translating the Jewish Freud : by Seidman, Naomi
Impossible Takes Longer : by Gordis, Daniel
The Hebrew Teacher : by Arad, Maya
Ba-Yom She-Puppy Shinah Et Tokhniyotav / by Greenberg, Efrat

Upcoming Events

Drop-In Book Discussion: One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank, 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. To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World at […] ...
Sun, Oct 06
2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

From Moses to Moisesville: A Journey through the Jewish World, with Ariel GoldsteinIn-Person

Click here to register for this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  “When Moses led us from slavery to freedom, he would not have imagined that after three thousand years the Jews of the world […] ...
Mon, Oct 14
6:00 pm - 7:15 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Hebrew Storytelling at the Library with HadarIn-Person

dIKOIU-.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. Come enjoy storytelling with Hadar Aviram, and meet other families that speak Hebrew. The Library also has many Hebrew books for children and […] ...
Sun, Oct 20
11:00 am - 11:30 am
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, with Margalit FoxVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event. In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from […] ...
Sun, Oct 20
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Sabor Judío: The Jew­ish Mex­i­can Cookbook, with Ilan Sta­vans and Mar­garet E. BoyleVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event, co-presented by Jewtina y Co. “An instant classic and more than a cookbook—it is a critical portrait of a community. An absolutely new and stellar contribution.”—Michael W. Twitty, author of Koshersoul Sabor Judío celebrates the delicious fusion of two culinary traditions: Jewish and Mexican. Written with […] ...
Sun, Oct 27
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Redeemed: A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood, with Penny LaneVirtual

Click here to register for this free virtual event. Penny Lane’s Redeemed: A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood is an inspiring rise-from-the-ashes story of overcoming abuse and trauma, of being waylaid by both family and religion’s promise of love, and harnessing the resilience to find the way home When she is abruptly snatched away from her […] ...
Wed, Oct 30
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Virtual via Zoom

Commemorating the 85th Year of the KindertransportsIn-Person

Click here to register for this free in-person program, co-presented by the Kindertransport Association. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  It has become more important than ever to find meaningful ways to commemorate and educate about the Holocaust. A […] ...
Sun, Nov 03
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

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. 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 Cranston, who as a young journalist exposed the […] ...
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

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. 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. Stolpersteine, translated as Stumbling Blocks, are […] ...
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 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 California 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