When a Barrie resident passed away earlier this year, he inadvertently left the local Jewish community with an extensive collection of Jewish books.

A friend of the late Richard Strothard, who wasn’t Jewish, was cleaning out his apartment when she discovered about 200 books, including copies of the Torah, Tanach and Talmud, as well as books on various subjects related to Judaism, such as Judaism and Vegetarianism, Waters of Eden – Mysteries of the Mikvah, How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household, Hitler’s Willing Executioners and the War Against the Jews.

Not wanting to dispose of them, she offered the collection to Barrie’s Am Shalom Congregation and the city’s library, but both declined to take it.

She then called Debbie Zober, who  leads JACOB (an acronym for the Jewish Community of Barrie), a social and cultural networking group made up of about 50 Jewish families in Barrie with her husband, Robert.

“I got a phone call from a woman who said that her friend had just died and she needed to clean out his apartment, and he had a lot of books in his apartment,” Zober said, adding that the woman told her the synagogue didn’t want them because it didn’t have a place to properly store them, and the library said it wasn’t interested.

“She didn’t know what to do with them and she was going to throw them out. When I heard that, I thought, some of them have Hebrew, so they might be prayer books, and I didn’t want them going in recycling, so I said I’d have a look at them.”

Zober said the woman, who didn’t want to give her name, brought boxes full of the books to her home.

“We put them in the front hall, and we started looking at them. We realized what they were and how much there was and it was just unbelievable to us,” Zober said.

She said that other than his interest in Jewish books (as well as other religions), she doesn’t know much about Strothard, who also had teach-yourself-Hebrew books and cassettes.

“He had taught himself Hebrew. Apparently he was fluent. Half these books are in Hebrew, and half the books are in English,” Zober said.

“You can see in the books that he had taught himself Hebrew, that he had written notes and plans on how he was going to teach himself Hebrew. It is really amazing.”

She said she hopes people in the community, and even those who are visiting in the summer from out of town, will take advantage of the library in her home.

“I think the important thing is that people use them and that they are not just sitting here on the shelf. It is open to anyone who wants to use these books.”

To learn more about the collection, email [email protected].