Last week was the inaugural (virtual) #DHJewish conference, based out of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). The conference spanned millenia, large portions of the world, and a variety of texts and languages. As a kind of pre-conference treat, a special issue in Reviews in Digital Humanities focusing on Jewish Studies projects […]
Category: Jewish Studies
Finding the women in Columbia’s Judaica collections
When searching for women in early manuscript collections, it may seem as if they are only found without agency; adjacent to the men in their lives. However, when I began looking for traces of women in Columbia’s rare Judaica collection, I was delighted to discover that they have a presence throughout the collections. I began […]
On the Trail of Jewish Books Around the World
When looking at books produced in the early modern period, it seems that every book has a different story to tell. Each book produced during the hand-press era contains unique information about the people who created, bound, bought, sold, and censored them. In many cases, that data is the only remainder of the existence of […]
Summer Processing of Hebraica and Judaica materials
During the summer, as things quiet down on campus, we often turn to large processing projects, providing further access to many of our otherwise unknown holdings. This summer has been no different in the Hebraica and Judaica collections. In past years, our talented students have cataloged about 2000 rare printed Hebrew books, which can now, […]
Online Resource: American Jewish Joint Distribution Council Archives
The JDC Archives holds the institutional records of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee since its founding in 1914. Given the nature of JDC’s work and the role it has played over more than a century of activity, these collections are among the most significant in the world for the study of modern Jewish history […]
This week! David Ruderman on Christians, Jews, and those in between in 19th-Century Europe
Please join us this Thursday evening (November 12) at the annual Norman E. Alexander lecture, featuring David Ruderman (University of Pennsylvania). […]
NEH grant to digitize LCCAJ (Yiddish language archive) at Columbia
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) has received an award of $150,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize field notes and linguistic surveys from the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ) archive. The LCAAJ archive is an extraordinary resource for research in Yiddish studies that can shed much valuable light on […]
Online resources for Hebrew language and the Israeli elections
In preparation for the elections in Israel, to be held next week on March 17, I’d like to highlight two new freely available resources. The first, created by the National Library of Israel, relates directly to the upcoming elections. The NLI has created an online portal to the “Election Chronicles,” an online exhibit and information […]
EIGHT early American Jewish newspapers, now available digitally!
I am pleased to announce that the following Early American newspapers are now available digitally through the following links. With the exception of the American Israelite and American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger, all newspapers are freely available through the Historical Jewish Press website Columbia is very proud to have been involved, with New York University […]
Lecture: How (and why) the Jews invented Hollywood
Columbia University Libraries is pleased to announce the annual Norman E. Alexander Lecture in Jewish Studies, featuring Neal Gabler, Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at USC: "How (and why) the Jews invented Hollywood." The lecture will take place on Wednesday, October 16 at the Skylight Room in the Faculty House (64 Morningside Drive, […]