Columbia’s Yiddish Studies Program is the oldest in the country, beginning in 1952 under the direction of renowned Yiddish scholar Uriel Weinreich. Weinreich’s student, Marvin Herzog was one of the major figures in the creation of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ), whose archives are held at Columbia. In terms of historic […]
Tag: Primary Sources
Hebrew mss @ CUL: Jews and Privileges in Germany
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 […]
Online Resources: Finding Archives
It is true that the business of doing history in today’s internet age has become much easier, but there are still a tremendous amount of resources that are only available physically. One example of this is archives, or collections of papers (personal or institutional). Archives can range from the very small (one or two folders) […]
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 […]
Two new digital manuscript sites: Dead Sea Scrolls and Maimonides
In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd exploring a cave in the Judean desert came across a fantastic treasure trove of Hebrew documents from the third to the first centuries BCE. The Dead Sea Scrolls, as we now know them, are now the oldest known Biblical manuscripts in existence. While they can be viewed today at the […]
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 Resource: Confidential Print, Middle East (1839-1969)
We are proud to announce a new database containing primary sources relating to the history of Israel and the Middle East: The Confidential Print collection includes documents relating to Middle Eastern history from the years 1839-1969. The series originated out of a need for the British Government to preserve all of the most important papers […]
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West’s Response to Jewish Emigration
As part of a purchase of a major database collection, Columbia now has access to "Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West’s Response to Jewish Emigration." According to the site’s description: The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) was organized in London in August 1938 as a result of the Evian Conference of July 1938. The Evian […]
“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 […]