Novicoff Reading Room

The Harris Center's Novicoff Reading Room is open to all students and faculty during the Center’s open hours.

With comfortable chairs, a table, and a couch, the Novicoff Reading Room is a peaceful, comfortable place to read and think. Visitors are welcome to browse through the collection of current Jewish periodicals—among them The Jerusalem Report, International Jerusalem Post, Jewish Voices from Germany, Moment, and The Jewish Press (Omaha)—or to use the space for studying, reading, and writing.

The Reading Room contains a limited-circulation Jewish Studies library, focusing on works of modern Jewish thought and literature. It also holds a core reference collection, including a complete Talmud, a complete set of the Encyclopedia Judaica, and classic documentary films such as "Shoah" (Lanzmann, 1985), "Night and Fog" (Relais, 1955), and “The Sorrow and the Pity” (Ophüls, 1969).

The Reading Room is named in honor of Judge Ben Novicoff, a former presiding judge of the Nebraska Workers Compensation Court. Judge Novicoff is a prominent member of the Nebraska legal and Jewish communities. He has been a very generous supporter of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and of the Harris Center for Judaic Studies and the UNL Hillel–Jewish Students’ Association in particular. In this way, Judge Novicoff has honored his family’s deep historical roots in Nebraska.