“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 […]

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Hebrew Mss @ CUL: The Pope, the Sun King, and a Hebrew prayerbook in Southern France

Throughout the centuries leading up to the French Revolution, the Jews of France were alternatively expelled and invited back many times (the 14th and 17th centuries were particularly confusing in this regard).  Throughout this time, however, there were four cities that remained consistently safe for Jews.  Ironically (but perhaps not too surprisingly for those familiar […]

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Hebrew Mss @ CUL: New Aquisitions in History

In February of 1988, the Library Columns, the publication of the Columbia University Libraries, had a note about a donation from Mr. and Mrs. Schaefler.  The donation described, among other items, "…fourteenth-century documents pertaining to commercial transactions of the Jewish community at Apt in Provence, France."  Six of these manuscripts have been digitized, and are […]

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