At its second Jewish book drive, in 2024, Kehilat Pardes — The Rock Creek Synagogue received tens of thousands of donated books from the community.

Rabbi Uri Topolosky and the shul community are gearing up for a third book drive in an effort the rabbi hopes to make annual.

“I always think, ‘We must have exhausted all the books people are trying to get rid of,’” Topolosky said. “The first drive was huge. The second drive was massive.”

This year, Topolosky received calls almost weekly from community members asking to donate books.

“People call me all year looking to drop off books because the reality is, it’s not once a decade that people are downsizing, or once a decade that people have passed away and [their] families are looking to find new homes for their books,” he said. “It seems to me that there’s a constant need for this.”

Nov. 1-23, community members can drop off any unwanted Jewish books in the main entrance of Kehilat Pardes.

“It’s amazing what comes through,” Topolosky said. “People can outfit entire personal Jewish libraries from the book drive for very, very, very low cost.”

He sold close to 3,000 books for $1 to $2 each two years ago.

The project has only grown since its inception, according to Topolosky.

The effort came about in 2022 when the rabbi drove an annual truckload of worn-out sacred Jewish texts and materials to the Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park for ritual burial.

“‘We just can’t keep accepting donations,’” Topolosky recalled being told by a staff member of the cemetery.

Glenn Easton, the executive director of Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park, explained that the Clarksburg cemetery was being overwhelmed by too many boxes of texts that didn’t need to be buried. According to Jewish law, the only materials that require ritual burial are those that contain God’s name.

So Topolosky launched a campaign to collect the community’s unwanted books and assembled a team of volunteers to sort books into three categories: books to be recycled since they’re so old or damaged, books to be buried because they’re sacred text, and books that are still in good condition for resale.

This way, only the sacred texts get buried at the Garden of Remembrance.

The book drive and sale is sponsored by the Washington Board of Rabbis, the Garden of Remembrance and The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, and hosted at Berman Hebrew Academy and Kehilat Pardes.

“We had volunteers from dozens of synagogues in the area who all came to help make it work,” Topolosky said of the 2024 book drive.

This year, he plans to open the shul doors to anyone interested in helping out, including students looking to earn Student Service Learning hours.

“As more people get involved, it helps us find homes for some books,” Topolosky said.

He hopes to again repurpose secondhand books for use in local prisons, Jewish day schools, public schools and yeshivot, even sending books overseas to a community in Nigeria.

“What’s amazing is that people are looking for all kinds of things,” the rabbi said. “Some places want books only in English. Some places want things in Yiddish. Some places only want Hebrew texts. Some places want sets of things and are looking to build more robust libraries.”

Topolosky heard from a local synagogue community that just constructed its first building and wanted to outfit a synagogue library.

The event is also a big hit at home.

“My synagogue loves the book drive — it’s a fun aspect of our community,” Topolosky said.

During the drive in 2024, the rabbi gave each of Kehilat Pardes’ November b’nai mitzvah kids an empty box to fill with books “as a gift from the congregation.”

“We found all kinds of sweet byproducts of this drive that have really brought smiles to people’s faces,” Topolosky said. “The most important thing is for us to get the word out so that people know that this is the place they can bring their [books], and then to get the volunteers to help make it happen.”

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com