The Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center was established in 1981. Its 170 volunteers maintain an emergency hotline for victims of incest and rape that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Other services offered by the center include personal consultations and support groups for abuse victims, and it also provides volunteers to accompany victims, both female and male, to hospitals, the police, the prosecutor's office and the courts. In addition, the center attempts to change public attitudes toward sexual abuse by holding workshops on the subject for young people and teachers, and by conducting symposia at workplaces and in the Israel Defense Forces. Michal Makov, who coordinates school programs for the center, showed us the library.
Estimated number of books: 500, in the professional library. Alongside that is a smaller library, with about 100 books, mostly prose, that serves the volunteers on the shifts. It includes, among other things, the complete works of Ram Oren, "1984," Goethe's "Faust" and "My Century" by Guenter Grass.
Outstanding genres: Feminism, manuals for group leaders, violence, rape and sexual exploitation, children's books on the subject, diagnosis and treatment, prose that focuses on women, statistical reports, research studies, lesson plans, poetry and newspaper clippings.
Estimated number of users: The library is accessible to the center's 170 volunteers, as well as to students working in the field. Others readers include clients, both women and men, who come to the center because of sexual harassment or rape.
The library's budget: No defined budget (Makov: "When we can, we buy books. The rest is based on books that are contributed by the staff, or people who contact the center and want to express thanks and give us books").
Languages: Hebrew and English (Makov: "There are also some books in German, but nobody knows what they're about or how they came to be here").
Lending policy: Makov says that "we used to lend out books a lot but they got lost or didn't come back, and so the library dwindled. So we decided to change the policy: There are no loans, reading is on the premises and people come in by appointment."
Oldest book in the library: "Eve and Her Daughters: A Selection of Stories About Women," a collection of stories, all of them about women, by early Hebrew writer Dvora Baron, Moshe Smilansky and Yehoshua Bar-Yosef − alongside Chekhov, Gorky, Dorothy Parker and O. Henry (the book was published in 1953 and edited by Miriam Bernstein Cohen).
Recently acquired books: "Studying Feminism: A Reader"; "The Second Sex," by Simone de Beauvoir; "In the Name of Honor: A Memoir," by Mukhtar Mai, who was brutally gang-raped in Pakistan and chose to fight the common phenomenon in her country in court. Her attackers were found guilty and her struggle received attention from the international media.
Books on the shopping list: "We don't have a budget for books for the near future, but we would very much like Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando,' which has now come out in Hebrew; 'Neglect and Abuse of Children in Israel'; and 'Legal Feminism in Theory and Practice,' a collection of articles edited by Daphne Barak-Erez.
Most represented authors in the library: Carol Gilligan and ?law professor and gender specialist? Orit Kamir.
Most-borrowed books: "'Trauma and Recovery,' by Judith Herman. This is our Bible, and the first book we recommend that our new volunteers read in order to understand the dynamic of sexual injury. After that comes 'Critical and Clinical Perspectives on Incest,' which was edited by Zivya Seligman and Zahava Solomon, a collection of excellent articles on the subject; Susan Brownmiller's 'Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape'; and 'The King Is Naked,' by Dorit Abramovitz."
Most popular books in the field of feminism: "Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own.' Carol Gilligan's 'In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development' and Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' are also in demand."
Most popular book in the field of sexual injury to women: "Trauma and Recovery," by Judith Herman.
The most popular books on the subject of sexual injury to men: "Unfortunately, there isn't a book in Hebrew that focuses on this."
Books that nobody borrows: "The books in German."
Most expensive book in the library: "'Risking Connections: A Training Curriculum for Working with Survivors of Childhood Abuse,' which the center's director, Yael Bella-Avni, purchased for $70 when she was at a conference of Jewish women in New York two years ago. Since then we've been sort of hiding it in her room."
Books the library would like to have: "There are innumerable books like that, including additional copies of 'Trauma and Recovery,' because we are wearing out the copy we have. Also, 'Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution,' by Adrienne Rich; 'In Foreign Parts,' by Ilana Hammerman, about the trade in women; books about sexual injury to men and in general prose about women. We would be grateful for donations, both of suitable books on the subject to expand the professional library, and, for the volunteers' library, ordinary reading books that lack an agenda." (The center's e-mail address: jrcc@netvision.net.il?).
The most moving dedication: "In the book 'If My Mother Can't Love Me, Who Else Will?' by Nurit Zarchi, a woman who participated in a support group wrote: 'A gift to the class of June, 2004, with thanks to the center, upon the completion of our meetings.' What's most moving is when we receive books from our clients. This is a kind of very personal gesture that touches the bottom of the heart and remains with us for a long time.
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