Yoel Finkelman

Yoel Finkelman is the curator of the Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel.

Fall 2022

Think Over My Lesson and Try to Destroy It

When Levinas met a vagabond called Chouchani, he told a friend, “I cannot tell what he knows, all I can say is that all that I know, he knows.” Now that we have dozens of Chouchani’s notebooks, can we finally know what he knew?

Fall 2017

Afghan Treasure

Yoel Finkelman , Ofir Haim

Sometime in the 11th century, a distraught, young Jewish Afghan man named Yair sent a painful letter to his brother-in-law. Life had dealt Yair a tough hand, or maybe it was just his own bad choices.

Winter 2011

ArtScroll’s Empire

Yoel Finkelman

How did a Brooklyn-based, Orthodox publishing house corner the market on religious texts in America?