The Columbia University Libraries has recently acquired a database of 400 digitized Yiddish books from the Hebraica and Judaica of the Tychson Collection at the Rostock University. According to the publisher's description: "The nearly 400 titles of this edition offer a cross-section of the history of Yiddish books up to the 19th century. There are […]
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Yosef Yerushalmi Papers: Processed and available for research
The papers of noted Columbia professor, Yosef Yerushalmi, have now been processed and are mostly (with the exception of some closed correspondence) open for use in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Many thanks go to Jacob Goldwasser and Carrie Hintz for their tremendous work on the archive. More information can be found in the […]
New Online Resource: Aufbau
The Library of the Leo Baeck Institute has completed digitizing all issues of the German-Jewish émigré Journal, Aufbau published between 1934 and 2004, thus ensuring that the entire contents of the most important publication of the global German-Jewish refugee and exile community will remain available online to researchers. The new resource is available immediately at: archive.org/details/aufbau In […]
Hebrew Mss @ CUL: New Acquisition: Franchetti Family Archive
I am pleased to announce the acquisition of manuscripts from the archive of the Franchetti family. The Franchettis were hatmakers, originally from Mantua, who moved to Tunis and established their hat business there. The business quickly became global, with connections in Leghorn/Livorno and Izmir. This new collection includes 8 volumes of business correspondence and records. […]
New Database Acquisition: Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud text databank
I am pleased to announce the acquisition of a new database for the study of Talmud at Columbia, the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud text databank. The databank includes typed transcriptions and images of nearly all of the critical manuscripts and early printings of the Talmud, to allow scholarly research of variants and alternate readings […]
Primary sources in American Jewish History
The Penn Libraries have launched a new website, the Gershwind-Bennett Isaac Leeser Digitization Project, featuring access to the personal papers and publications of Isaac Leeser, widely regarded as the foremost American Jewish leader in antebellum America The Leeser site, developed as an international partnership over the course of seven years, is the first of a number […]
Online Resources: Holocaust and Genocide
The Shoah Visual History Archive is largest database of first-person Holocaust testimonies, founded by Steven Spielberg. With over 50,000 testimonies from Holocaust survivors and liberators, carefully indexed in short segments for ease of searchability and use, the VHA is a tremendous resource for the history of the Holocaust. Recently, the VHA has expanded to include […]
Crowdsourcing Yiddish transcription/translation
As anyone who has done research using Yiddish newspapers can tell you, it's not easy to find primary sources, especially those from newspapers, in the digital world. While Yiddish newspapers contain critical information about the labor industry, immigration, the Jewish day-to-day environment, and so much else, finding these materials is not easy, and often requires […]
New Resource: Early New York Synagogue Archives
Synagogue records, as records of a particular community in a particular place, can contain tremendous gems for scholarship in Jewish history. Thanks to a wonderful collaboration between the The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the American Jewish Historical Society, the records of five of the most important synagogues in New York City are […]
David Stern Lecture: The Lives of Jewish Books
As we near the close of physical version of The People in the Books (the online version will, of course remain online), we look forward to one more lecture dealing with Hebrew manuscripts. On January 22, as part of the Grolier Club's Bibliography Week, Professor David Stern (University of Pennsylvania) will be speaking at Columbia […]