New from RBML’s Archivists | August 2019

Head Archivist Kevin Schlottmann shares collections newly opened or updated by RBML’s Archivists. New finding aids Yehudah Joffe papers, 1893-1966, bulk 1920-1945 “The collection consists of Joffe’s correspondence, manuscripts/notes, and newspaper clippings. Joffe’s correspondence in Yiddish in English is both personal and professional, covering communication with institutions he was working at or hoping to work […]

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Librarian Jane Siegel picks favorites from the RBML collections

The Current, a journal of contemporary politics, culture, and Jewish affairs at Columbia, stopped in to the RBML to speak with Jane Siegel, Librarian for Rare Books. She’s all-around fount of knowledge about how so many of our rarities and oddities came to reside in Butler Library. Read more about Jane’s career here in the […]

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Summer Processing of Hebraica and Judaica materials

During the summer, as things quiet down on campus, we often turn to large processing projects, providing further access to many of our otherwise unknown holdings.  This summer has been no different in the Hebraica and Judaica collections.  In past years, our talented students have cataloged about 2000 rare printed Hebrew books, which can now, […]

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A King’s College/Columbia founder’s contributions to Hebrew Studies

Judaica Librarian Michelle Chesner keeps you updated about new acquisitions, collection finds and exhibitions in Jewish Studies at Columbia. In this post she shares some revelations about  Revered Samuel Johnson’s connection to the study of Hebrew. Samuel Johnson was the founder of King’s College (renamed Columbia after the American Revolution), and its sole faculty member until 1757. […]

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Talk | Re-embracing the Lachrymose Theory of Jewish History: Dialogue with a Columbia Tradition

October 30, 2018 @ 6PM Faculty House Garden Room 2 Norman E. Alexander Lecture in Jewish Studies In his multi-volume social and religious history of the Jews, Salo Baron, one of the most influential Jewish historians of the 20th century, decried how Jewish history had been told and retold as an endless tale of woe. […]

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