As it celebrated its 95th anniversary in 2009, the Jewish Public Library (JPL) remains unique among Montreal’s - and the world’s - Jewish institutions. A full service lending and research library containing North America’s largest circulating Judaica collection, we are an internationally-recognized resource while also meeting the informational, educational and recreational needs of Jewish Montrealers of all ages and backgrounds.

Our Main Library holds over 150,000 items in our five official languages; our 30,000-item Children’s Library also offers many activities for children up to 14 years of age; and our Archives help preserve and honour Canada’s Jewish history for generations to come.  We are also a key provider of adult cultural and educational programming for our community.

MAIN LIBRARY
Our circulating collections serve the casual browser and focused scholar alike. While our general and popular interest items run the gamut from bestselling novels to first-run films on DVD, the majority of our holdings - Judaica - is comparable in scope to those of major academic institutions. In both instances, we have materials in English, French, Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian.

The Library also maintains special non-circulating collections. These include:

Rare Books: Incunabula (the earliest being Josephus' Tractatus Judaice, 1481); early Hebrew grammar books; liturgical works; kabbalistic treatises; Talmuds, historical tracts, and travelogues

• Jewish Canadiana: Newspaper and magazine clippings, pamphlets, chapbooks, and unpublished manuscripts reflecting Canadian Jewry’s artistic, cultural and intellectual life; among them, personal items from Lea Roback, Sam Gesser and Library founder Reuven Brainin

• Ephemeral Collection:  Copious, contemporary accounts of Jewish life in the Diaspora and Israel, from a variety of European newspapers in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and other languages

• Closed Stacks: Fragile, controversial, and older Judaica material (19th century) in many languages

• Yizkor (Memorial) Books: Among the largest collections extant worldwide, these Hebrew and Yiddish volumes document pre-Holocaust life in hundreds of Eastern European shtetls, complete with photographs, lists of names, memoirs and chronicles of local Jewish communal organizations’ activities

• Photograph, sheet music and multimedia archive

• German Judaica Collection: books ranging from philosophy to theology, psychology, political science and literature

• Periodicals: We hold collections of English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish academic journals

• Irving Layton Collection: The personal library of one of Canada's most famous poets reflects his eclectic personality, with a diverse collection of annotated, signed copies of poetic works, philosophy, psychology, classics, literature and non-fiction 

• Yiddish Periodicals: One of the largest collections available anywhere of Yiddish journals (print and microform) from Europe and Canada