By Jessica A. Kent
Jan. 5, 2019
It’s 1933. In Germany and Austria the campaign to burn literature – any literature that opposed the ideas of Nazism, especially Jewish literature – began, with Goebbels pronouncing that the era of Jewish intellectualism had ended. But in Boston, a woman who made it her life’s work to promote Jewish literature and educate the world about it had only just begun.
Fanny Goldstein was the director of the West End branch of the Boston Public Library from 1922-1957 – the first Jewish woman to direct a BPL branch – and in her time there she curated the second largest collection of Judaica in the state, founded Jewish Book Week (which became the Jewish Book Council of America), compiled “must-read” lists of Jewish authors, and more.
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