The National Library owns the world's largest collections of Hebraica and Judaica,[1] and is the repository of many rare and unique manuscripts, books and artifacts.

The library was located on B'nai Brith street, between the Meah Shearim neighborhood and the Russian Compound.

[3] The law, which came into effect on 23 July 2008, changed the library's name to "National Library of Israel" and turned it temporarily to a subsidiary company of the University, later to become a fully independent community interest company, jointly owned by the Government of Israel (50%), the Hebrew University (25%) and other organizations.

[5] The 34,000 square meters building, was designed by the Basel-based architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

The completion date was postponed a number of times and the old library building at Givat Ram continued to be used till September 2023.

[7] In August 2020, the National Library announced its immediately forthcoming closure "until further notice" due to the ongoing financial and government crisis.

A small skeleton staff continued coming to the building but most of the employees either worked from home or took partial or full paid leave.

Due to be completed in 2023, the National Library of Israel is digitizing over 2,500 rare manuscripts and books which will be available online for free.

[13] The collection, donated by the family of the collector Abraham Yahuda, includes many works by Newton about mysticism, analyses of holy books, predictions about the end of days and the appearance of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

[20] Indeed, the Israel Supreme Court in a highly controversial decision ordered the papers including the Franz Kafka papers to be deposited here although Max Brod had expressly left the ultimate decision to the daughters of his secretary and heir Ester Hoffe providing that they were to hand them over to the "Bibliothek der Hebräischen Universität Jerusalem oder der Städtischen Bibliothek Tel Aviv oder einem anderen öffentlichen Archiv im Inland oder Ausland" [library of the Hebrew university Jerusalem or the City Library Tel Aviv or another domestic or foreign public archive].