Over the course of the last year, many books in the Norman E. Alexander Library have been repaired through the excellent conservation work of Abigail Slawik and other experts whose expertise was funded through the generosity of multiple donors. Abby’s work has included the repair and rebinding of a 14th century Spanish Hebrew Bible held […]
Guest post: Noa Tsaushu on Issachar Ryback’s Shtetl, mayn khorever heym: a gedekhenish
Noa Tsaushu is a doctoral student of Yiddish Studies at Columbia University, currently working to complete her dissertation titled “Yiddish Art: The Desire for Cohesion among the Soviet-Yiddish Avant-Garde.” She is this year’s recipient of the Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellowship in East European Arts, Music, and Theater at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and […]
American Jewish Historical Newspapers – available and online!
One of the most important primary source resources for modern Jewish history is the Jewish Historical Press (JHP) project, hosted by the National Library of Israel. The goal of the project is to digitize and make available Jewish newspapers from around the globe. At present, this freely accessible database provides access to 775 titles from […]
New and newly processed collections
It is a busy time for the Norman E. Alexander Library for Jewish Studies. In addition to our many classes last fall, and new ones coming up in the Spring, we have also been focusing on important acquisitions and processing work to broaden our collections and make them better available. Two student assistants, Jem Hanan […]
From the Stacks…Exploring the Sephardic World in Amsterdam
This essay was initially printed in the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies’ 2022 Magazine. The full magazine is available here. The Sephardic Jews and their descendants were very proud of their cultural heritage. Wherever they traveled, they brought their culture – and languages – with them to their new homelands. Spanish and Portuguese persisted […]
Alexander Library Celebration of Collections 2023
We are thrilled to announce the annual Alexander Library Celebration of Collections for 2023, which will take place virtually on November 9, 2023 at 12 PM EST. This year’s event will feature the following speakers and topics, and focusing on rare books and manuscripts from Spain, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire, spanning the 14th through […]
“Just digitize it!?” A peek into the labor and workflows of the Judaica digitization project
At Columbia University Libraries, and at the Norman E. Alexander Library in particular, one of our major goals is to provide access to materials to as broad a user base as possible. With one of the largest Judaica manuscript collections in the United States, a major priority has been to provide access to these unique […]
Highlighting Jewish American Collections
In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month (May), we’re highlighting unique materials relating to the history of the Jews in the Americas. In the past, of course, we’ve discussed the 18th century history of Hebrew and Jewish materials in the Columbia context, but the vast collections in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library highlight many […]
New acquisitions roundup
University calendars tend to operate on a different year than the standard January-December. The academic calendar begins in the fall, and the budget calendar restarts in the summer, and so January 1 is simply the restart after a holiday break. However, the new year is a good time to consider the many new unique and […]
Hanukkah in the RBML
Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds a diverse collection of Judaica, and its holdings relating to the holiday of Hanukkah span various collections, including rare books and manuscripts, graphic arts, and literature. This post will attempt to show some of the varied items from our collections dealing with the holiday, through legal and rabbinic […]