Michael Handelzalts edits the excellent weekly Haaretz book supplement. It's evident that he's a real bibliophile and his weekly editorial is always a pleasure to read.
This week he talks about "A new book in Hebrew by Prof. Zeev Gries, "The Book as an Agent of Culture, 1700-1900,"" that "strives - and succeeds - to show that Jewish bibliography, considered by many to be a subject devoid of excitement and fit only for most ardent and boredom-proof librarians, is in fact a narrative full of suspense and colorful details, a story of the Jewish spirit, of the awakening of the Jewish "intelligentsia" that turned the book into a "motherland in a suitcase.""
He says that the forward to the book opens with a quote from the diaries of Ben Gurion, which leads Handelzaltz to discuss the way the Dead Sea Scrolls were acquired by the State of Israel.
