Shhh! Can’t you see you’re in a library?
It’s Jewish Book Month and you’re invited to enter some of the most wonderful Jewish libraries in the world. From Princeton to Jerusalem to cyberspace, many Jewish libraries offer online highlights of their permanent collections, usually for free. Today, we’ll tour some of the best libraries and find out how to visit dozens more.
The Jewish National & University Library at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, http://jnul.huji.ac.il, has a bilingual Web site that is home to several special collections. You can examine more than 250 ancient maps of Jerusalem from 1486 to the early 20th century. At the Songs We Love to Hear Web site, you can listen to recordings of Hebrew songs produced before the creation of thestate of Israel. And there is Albert Einstein Online, more than 900 digitized manuscripts from the Hebrew University’s Albert Einstein Archives,.
In 1896 sisters Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson purchased fragments of a Jewish manuscript while on a visit to the Middle East. Upon their return to England, they showed their finds to the University of Cambridge’s Solomon Schechter. Schechter traveled to Cairo and secured permission to bring contents of the Cairo Genizah (depository for worn-out copies of sacred Jewish writings) to England. There are now 140,000 fragments of documents from the Genizah found at Cambridge University Library’s Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. The library Web site, www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/Collection.html, has a detailed history of the collection along with dozens of scanned images including the handwriting and signature of Maimonides.
Yale University, www.library.yale.edu/judaica/exhibits.html, has held several impressive exhibits from its Judaica collection. You can enjoy scaled-down versions of five exhibits, including “You Shall Tell Your Children,” an examination of the evolution of the Passover Haggadah from the 13th century to the present, and highlights of Yale archaeological digs in the Holy Land since the 19th century.
Since Aaron Lansky founded the National Yiddish Book Center in 1980, it has recovered 1.5 million volumes. Even if you can’t visit the Center’s home in Amherst, Mass., you can still benefit from its successes at www.yiddishbookcenter.org. You can view the center’s Yiddish book catalogue online; check out the list “The 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature” — www.bikher.org/story.php?n=10026 — and read selections from Pakn Treger, an English language journal about Yiddish culture. There are features about Abraham Asen’s 1947 Yiddish translation of King Lear, an essay about Yiddish life in Boro Park and a look at “Jewish” photography. As for fiction, you can read Sholem Aleichem’s “Honorable Profession: Menakhem-Mendl Becomes a Writer.” The story is presented in its original Yiddish alongside an English translation by Hillel Halkin.
The National Library of Canada, www.nlc-bnc.ca/incunab/index-e.html, houses the Jacob M. Lowy Collection of old and rare Hebraica and Judaica, which dates from the 15th to the 20th century. You can view dozens of images online, including excerpts from first editions of the works of Josephus Flavius; 17th century astronomical and mathematical drawings of Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, a pupil of Galileo, and a plate from a 1740 Venetian Haggadah with Judeo-Italian translation.
Chicago’s Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies offers an impressive online resource — at a price. Members of the institute can access the Feinberg E-Collection, www.spertus.edu/asher/feinberg, which contains the full text of nearly 800 books and 25,000 articles. Read a translation of Sefer Ha-Aggadah by Hayim Nahman Bialik, the contents of the Bar Ilan Responsa database and the entire 16-volume edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica.
Unlike most of the libraries mentioned above, the Jewish Virtual Library, www.us-israel.org/jsource, exists only in cyberspace. The library boasts 8,000 articles and 4,000 photographs and is divided into 13 “wings,” including history, women, the Holocaust, maps and biography. Don’t miss this site’s reference sections where you can find works by Ahad Ha’am and the complete text of Theodor Herzl’s “The Jewish State.”
Happy browsing!
Mark Mietkiewiczis a Toronto-based internet producer who writes, lectures and teaches about the Jewish Internet. Reach him at [email protected].