The Hebrew manuscript collection at CUL is quite wide-ranging, covering space from India to the Carribean, and time from the 10th to the 20th centuries. It has particularly strong coverage of the early modern period, with substantial historical materials from Italy and Amsterdam, Greece (Corfu) and France. One obvious lacuna for our collection was the […]
Tag: New Aquisitions
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 […]
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 […]
Hebrew Mss @ CUL: New Acquisitions in History and Literature
CUL is proud to announce the recent acquisition of two new manuscripts, both dealing with Sephardic Jewry, which were sold at a recent Kestenbaum and Company sale as part of the Alfonso Cassuto collection. The first manuscript, from 1506 (left), is critical for the history of the Jews in Portugal. The manuscript contains a register of […]
“New” old books at CUL
While Columbia’s collection of Jewish Studies materials in its Rare Book and Manuscript Library is already extensive, we are still actively collecting "new" materials for our collection. Two recent purchases were made with the help of the Rabbi Nathan Stern fund for Semitic Studies: 1) A manuscript "Commonplace book" from America, c.1825, which includes "the […]