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July 23, 2004/Av 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 44
Open books
Judaica collection now ready to read
MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
Staff Writer
For most of Steven Zipperstein's life, his parents, Edward and Mae, built a collection of Jewish texts, histories and other nonfiction works that exceeded shelving space in their Los Angeles home and required separate storage.
Now, some 1,300 books of the 10,000-volume collection are available for checkout or reference at Arizona State University's Hayden Library. The library hopes to make the entire collection available by June 30, 2005.
As Steven grew up, he joined in his parents' passion to expand their collection. When Edward had a stroke a few years ago, he stopped reading and collecting books, so it seemed natural that his parents should give Steven the collection.
"I've liked the idea of marking my father's achievement in some public way, and he had put an immense amount of energy into collecting books," Zipperstein said. "I decided rather than keeping it or selling it, I thought of giving it to a place. The prospect of having it continue to be used by many people was an attractive one."
Zipperstein said his history with ASU helped him decide where to donate the collection. He is the Daniel E. Koshland professor of Jewish culture and history and co-director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University and has been a guest lecturer at ASU. He also has formed a close relationship with Jack Kugelmass, director of ASU's Jewish Studies Program.
"I sensed that this was a place with a first-rate Jewish studies faculty, but not yet with a first-rate Judaica collection, so it seemed the fit was potentially a good one," he said. "More pertinent is the fact that my younger son, my 15-year-old son Sam, was born in Mesa, just next door to Tempe, and the prospect of having something of our family and something Jewish at, or very near to, his birthplace seemed a good idea."
Steven said that he initially contacted Northwestern Uni-versity, where his father received a master's degree in business administration, but the collection was too large for the school.
He then approached ASU.
As a curator and biblio-grapher for Hayden Library, Rachel Leket Mor is charged with displaying and main-taining a selection of books from the Zipperstein Collec-tion.
"I'm very proud," she said.
The Zipperstein Collection features a wide range of books, including mostly nonfiction works, histories of American Jewry, philosophical writings and sermons, relations between Judaism and Christianity, and children's books, as well as key Jewish texts, such as the Talmud. The books are mainly written in English, although some texts, like the bar mitzvah sermons, are also printed with Yiddish and Hebrew transla-tions, and were mostly printed between the late 19th century and the 1980s.
"There are so many areas (the collection) is strong at," said Leket-Mor. "The impor-tant thing is that it is here and that (the collection) will have a huge impact on the program and the research quality in this institution."
Sherrie Schmidt, university librarian and dean, said she was delighted to receive the Zipperstein Collection, the largest to any library on any ASU campus in more than a decade.
"It is the largest donation that we have had, in terms of the number of books, since I have been here ... in the last 14 years," she said.
It will be accessible to the general public, but will most likely get the most use from ASU students working toward a Certificate of Jewish Studies.
"Most (students) pursuing this track are coming out of religious studies," said Kugel-mass. "The only place now where we're developing a concentration of expertise is in the Hebrew studies."
So, what is the role of a Jewish studies program at a place like Arizona State University?
"It's not really to create lots and lots of majors," Kugelmass said. "What Jewish Studies does is expand the curriculum by bringing Jewish subjects into the curriculum. It makes students and faculty aware of Jewish issues, Jewish knowledge and contributes toward multiculturalism.
"The second thing we do is ... bring Jewish knowledge and understanding to the broader community, outside the university."
Kugelmass first met Zipperstein when they were each attending separate graduate schools and crossed paths through the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Since then, Zipperstein helped to hire a friend of Kugelmass' as a Judaica librarian at Stanford. And, when Kugelmass took over ASU's Jewish Studies Pro-gram in 1997, Zipperstein was brought in as a consultant to assess the program's Judaic book collection.
Zipperstein said he hopes his family's collection will be used in the manner intended: to better educate students on Jewish, Israeli and other religious issues.
"One of the wonderful and inexplicable things about a library is that its mysteries that are discovered by so many different people and so many different ways," he said. "All one could really do is try to draw in good students, have a library that is reasonably comfortable, is well stocked, and have classes that are well thought through.
"Then something mys-terious happens - that mystery is learning."
Selected books from the collection will be on display on the library's concourse level through Aug. 31. For library hours and more information, visit www.asu.edu/lib or call 480-965-6141.
Contact the writer at michael_miklofsky@jewishaz.com.
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