President Reuven Rivlin spoke on Tuesday at a cornerstone laying ceremony at he new Israel National Library in Jerusalem. During the ceremony, Rivlin said that the event was a celebration for all book lovers, and for the People of the Book.
He said, "The inspiring historic process of our return to the land of Israel is not just the story of a physical return, but a process of a spiritual and ideological return to the wealth of culture created by the Jewish people. A return to freedom and liberty which are for us oxygen, a return to the Hebrew language, and to the story of the Jewish people as a whole. Zionism's founding fathers saw as a part of its goals, the thriving of Hebrew culture, the Hebrew arts." He continued on to say, "Zionism's leaders understood the need to honor and cherish Hebrew, and to set it at the center of the national project. But they failed to understand, that after all the tribulations it had endured there was a need to find a respectable and appropriate place, a place which would not seek to define which Hebrew was more or less important, but would instead appreciate its very existence. The place they had dreamed of was the National Library, a place to preserve, remember, sustain, make accessible, and develop the spiritual treasure of the Jewish people."
The President spoke of the location of the National Library and the decision to include it in the Kiryat HaLeom (National Quarter). "Here, opposite the site of the three branches of government, we are placing today the cornerstone of the branch of our national culture. The cornerstone of a pleasant home, spacious and full of the beauty of the national library."