Writing in Spanish and Portuguese among the Dutch: Jewish Sephardim in Amsterdam

In 1892, Temple Emanu-el, a Jewish Reform congregation in New York City, donated a collection of rare Judaica books and manuscripts to Columbia University. Richard James Horatio Gottheil, the son of Temple Emanu-el’s rabbi and Columbia’s newly established professor of Rabbinical Literature (his title would change many times over the next few decades) was instrumental […]

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The World in Digital: #DHJewish virtual conference recap

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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Imagining the World: Exhibit Reception

Thanks to all who joined us at the reception for the reception for the exhibit opening of Imagining the World: Unexplored Global Collections at Columbia on April 17.  Some pictures of the opening (and the exhibit itself) are included below.  The exhibit will be in the Chang Octagon Room of the Rare Book and Manuscript […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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