"Attention female book lovers! Please conclude your shopping and start heading out, since at 8 P.M. it will be the men's turn to look for some reading material." Shoppers at the Jerusalem ultra-Orthodox book fair in Jerusalem will hear this announcement booming from speakers every night this week. While separation between the sexes is strictly observed, the reading material suggests that the community has seen some major advances in recent years.

Like during the last couple of years, the third annual Biblical Book Week was timed to coincide with its secular equivalent taking place across the nation. Biblical Book Week is held in three different locales across Jerusalem, each appealing to a slightly different crowd.

Two sales points can be found at two of the capital's ultra-Orthodox shopping centers: Center 1 and Rav Shefa. The two centers target all strata of the Jerusalemite religious community, from the national religious to modern ultra-Orthodox families.

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The third sales center is a bit different. It is located in a closed wedding hall near Bar-Ilan Street, and is sponsored by the ultra-Orthodox daily newspaper Hamodia. The Bar-Ilan book fair appeals to a far more conservative crowd and is subject to more rabbinical supervision. It is also the one sales point that separates female and male shoppers.

But even the Bar-Ilan book fair demonstrates the significant progress the ultra-Orthodox community has made. In addition to the holy writings and religious encyclopedia for diligent yeshiva students, the stalls at Bar-Ilan offer children's books, comic books, suspense thrillers, biographies of prominent religious figures, cookbooks, and leisure literature. In fact, almost anything goes as long as the authors and publishers hail from within the community.

For example, the Feldheim ultra-Orthodox publishing house recently published a new kosher version of the Guinness Book of Records. The "Book of Records and Wonders" appears to be very popular with the young readership, and ultra-Orthodox children can be seen huddling by the Feldheim stall chirping with excitement as they read about Jewish records. There, inquisitive young minds can find answers to nagging issues such as what is the world's largest yeshiva (Mir in Jerusalem), or the world's oldest synagogue (Bevis Marks Synagogue in London).

"We have seen a tide of new publications over recent years," Yitzhak Pollack of the Feldheim publishing house says. "We receive new manuscripts on a weekly basis. The public is thirsty for more books, and it appears they can afford to buy them. This, in turn, leads more people to take up writing."

Alongside relatively novel and even daring books such as one entitled "A Thousand Tears" that is based on the lives of young yeshiva students who lose their path and stray away from God, ultra-Orthodox readers can also find classics.

A good example is the 23-volume collection of writings assembled by Rabbi Biton, who heads a Jerusalem yeshiva. In recent years, Biton employed a team of yeshiva students that studied and annotated the writings of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, an influential Medieval rabbinic authority. The product of their labors can be yours for NIS 1,950.

An especially delightful characteristic of Biblical Book Week that may also appeal to many secular book lovers is the blissful absence of commercial stands, advertising cellular phone companies and banks. Espresso bars are also unheard of.