Many thanks to Lucia Raspe for sharing her work on censorship in early printed Selihot, which was very helpful in writing this post. The Jewish month of Elul, coming right before the High Holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, is a particularly solemn one in Jewish religious life. Special penitential prayers, called Selihot, are […]
From its inception in 1754, the founders of Columbia University felt that the study of Hebrew was critical to understanding the classics. Columbia’s collection includes founder Samuel Johnson’s own copy of a Hebrew-Latin psalms with the Hebrew alphabet written in his own hand. Another professor in the 18th century was Johann Kunze, who taught Hebrew […]
It has been a busy year for Judaica acquisitions at the Columbia RBML. Three important acquisitions have been added to our collection: A collection of forty Italian Broadsides depicting regulations on various communities (including Ferrara, Padua, Ancona, and others), only one of which is in the extensive Valmadonna collection of broadsides. We plan to digitize […]
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 […]
December 9, 2010 (6-7 PM) at the Museum of Biblical Art Professor Diner, Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History Director, Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History New York University, will focus on three aspects of Jewish life in early America as they reflect on the first Hebrew bible printed here. She […]