In 1733, a man from Firenze, in Italy, named Moise (Moses) Vita (Hayyim) Cafsuto (Cassuto) set off on a journey to the Holy Land. He kept a diary of his travels throughout the Middle East, where he noted interesting sites (specifically Jewish ones, like graves and synagogues) and scenes along his journey. We recently acquired […]
Printers’ Marks in Handwritten Books
From almost the dawn of printing, printers have created special insignia to indicate their handiwork on the books that they produced. Jewish printers marks varied in design from the very simple (like the lion of Eliezer Alantansi in Hijar in the late 15th century, left), to the very complex (see below). The major source for […]
New Resource: Sefaria
Sefaria is a new, crowdsourced website which is "building a free living library of Jewish texts and their interconnections, in Hebrew and in translation. [The] scope is Torah in the broadest sense, from Tanakh to Talmud to Zohar to modern texts and all the volumes of commentary in between." Thus far, over 200,000 words have […]
Norman E. Alexander 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, […]
New acquisitions: Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online
"The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day. The encyclopedia contains overview articles that provide a readable synopsis of current knowledge of the major periods and varieties of the […]
New Acquistions: Old Yiddish printed books (digital)
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 […]
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 […]