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 […]
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“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 […]
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 […]
Manuscripts for Sukkot
On the fall holiday of Sukkot (also known as the Feast of Tabernacles) Jews construct temporary huts (reminiscent of the temporary existence of the Jews in the Sinai Desert) and acquire a selection of greenery (palm fronds, citrons, myrtle and willow branches) for ritual use. The final days of the holiday, Hosha’ana Rabba, Shemini Atseret, […]
N. E. Alexander Library’s Celebration of Collections 2022!
We are very pleased to announce the 2022 Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections on November 14, at 12:30 PM EST, featuring Charles E. Steinman, Dr. Susan Einbinder, and Dan Klein. Collections discussed include a medieval French manuscript that echoes the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, a 17th century manuscript discussing the plague in […]
Life, Love, Loss, and the Shaking of the Earth in Livorno
Books tell stories. Not only through the texts written or printed within them, but also through the ephemera and paratexts – the bindings, the inscriptions, even wax seals casually stamped in the back of a volume. Such is the case with a volume in Columbia’s collection, cataloged with the call number B893.14 Y11. There are […]
New electronic resources: Holocaust primary sources, Jewish Book history, and lots of e-books!
We are constantly adding new physical books to the library’s Judaica collection, but during the summer, when Butler Library seems far away, electronic resources are key to scholarly research. In recent months, we have added a number of databases, e-books, and e-journals to our virtual collections which are accessible to Columbia users everywhere. Note that […]
“Be Ready”: Anti-Fascist Yiddish Children’s Drawings in the Szajkowski Collections
Guest post by Daniela Goodman Rabner, BC ’22. Daniela spent the Spring 2022 semester inventorying and identifying Yiddish materials in the Zosa Szajkowski archive, so a new and significantly updated finding aid can provide increased access to the collection. She found some incredible gems along the way – some of the documents shown here will […]
Manuscripts and Printed Books – all bound up
In the very name of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library is a distinction between printed books and those written by hand, or manuscripts. Columbia’s printed books are housed separately from the manuscript codices, and they’re generally considered to be separate kinds of materials. In the early modern library, however, print and manuscript books sat […]
New and newly cataloged manuscripts from around the world
In recent months, we have been able to add many important materials to the Judaica collection. We acquired another set of letters (in Spanish, Hebrew, and Ladino) from the earliest days of the Amsterdam and Hamburg Sephardic communities in the 17th century (including one relating to the founding of the Sephardic community of Hamburg). These […]