In the Beginning ...

Hamishah Humshei Torah (The
five books of the Torah) (Berlin: Soncino Gesellschaft,
1933). The word Beresheet, which means, "In the
beginning," opens the Book of Genesis. This decorated initial
word is from the Hebrew Bible published by the Society of
Jewish Bibliophiles in Germany, the Soncino Gesellschaft,
in 1933. |
In the spring of 1815, Thomas Jefferson's collection of 6,487
volumes arrived in the nation's capital to form the nucleus for
the reconstituted Library of Congress -- its first collection
having been destroyed in the burning of the city by the British
the year before. Among these volumes were more than a half-dozen
books that could be considered Judaica, including the works of
the leading Jewish historian of antiquity, Josephus,
and a tractate of the Mishnah (a compilation of basic Jewish law,
ca. 200 C.E.) Especially noteworthy was a folio edition of The
Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus, the Jewish Historian.
Josephus, who lived in the first century, was appointed military
commander of Galilee during the Jewish rebellion against Rome
in 66 C.E. Captured by the Romans and exiled to Rome, he wrote
first, The Jewish Wars, and then, Antiquities of
the Jews. The Jefferson copy of The Genuine Works is
the first printing of Whiston's translation of Josephus (see page
9), and the many editions that subsequently appeared of this translation
attest to its broad appeal. Jefferson's sensibility -- his view
that there was no field of knowledge that might not prove useful
for Congress -- informs the Library of Congress's collecting policies
to this day.
The Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress, now one of the
world's leading centers for Hebrew and Yiddish studies, was established
in 1914 as part of the Division of Semitica and Oriental Literature.
Its beginnings may be traced to Jacob H. Schiff's gifts in 1912
and 1914 of funds to purchase nearly 10,000 books and pamphlets
from the private collection of Ephraim Deinard, a well-known bibliographer
and bookseller.

Cuneiform tablet, ca. 2400
B.C.E. The Library holds a modest collection of clay tablets
that were acquired as part of the Kirkor Minassian collection
in the late 1920s and the 1930s. These tablets contain the
earliest examples of writing held in the Library of Congress.
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In the years that followed those gifts, the Library developed
and expanded its Hebraic holdings to include materials of research
value in Hebrew and related languages. Today, the section houses
works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo- Persian, Judeo-Arabic,
Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic, Ge'ez, Amharic, and Tigrina. The section's
holdings are especially strong in the areas of the Bible and rabbinics,
liturgy, Hebrew language and literature, responsa, and Jewish
history. Unique to the section are its holdings of more than one
thousand original Yiddish plays -- in manuscript or typescript
-- written between the end of the nineteenth and the middle of
the twentieth century and submitted for copyright registration
to the Library of Congress. These plays were created for the American
Yiddish theater. Of particular interest to genealogists is the
Library's comprehensive collection of yizker-bikher (memorial
volumes) documenting Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the
Second World War, as well as a large collection of rabbinic bio-bibliographical
works in Hebrew. Available for consultation in the section is
a rich microfilm collection of Hebrew and Yiddish monographs,
newspapers, and serials, as well as microfilms of Hebrew manuscript
collections held by the Russian State Library (Moscow), Russian
Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), Preussiche Staatsbibliotek
(Berlin), and Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest). Located
in a nearby stack area, the section's more than 160,000 volumes
are readily available for examination by researchers and scholars.
Housed among the three thousand rarities in the section are cuneiform
tablets, manuscripts, incunabula (books printed before 1501),
ketuboth (marriage contracts), micrographies, miniature books,
and communal documents. The more than two hundred manuscripts
held in the Hebraic Section include a Hebrew translation of the
Koran, an eighteenth-century Italian decorated Scroll of Esther,
a selection of decorated Jewish marriage contracts, an early Ethiopian
Psalter in Ge'ez, and the section's most noteworthy treasure:
the Washington Haggadah, a fifteenth-century Hebrew illuminated
manuscript completed by Joel ben Simeon.

Incantation bowl from Mesopotamia,
ca. seventh century. Usually buried in a building's foundation,
magic bowls were designed to protect a house and its inhabitants
from devils and evildoers. Opinion differs as to the actual
ritual associated with these incantation bowls, but it is
generally believed that they were thought to entrap and
reject evil powers. As is common in these bowls, the Aramaic
inscription here is written on the inside in concentric
circles.
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Samuel Joseph Agnon, Kelev
Hutsot (A stray dog),
with illustrations by Avigdor Arikha (Jerusalem, 1960).
Published by award-winning and pioneer book designer Moshe
Spitzer, this work marks the first appearance of the "David"
typeface, which was designed by Ismar David. Spitzer was
a seminal influence on modern-day book publishing and design
in Israel. (Copyright © Tarshish Books, Jerusalem)
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With the enactment of U.S. Public Law 480 (P.L. 480) in 1958,
the Library of Congress greatly enhanced its ability to collect
Israeli publications comprehensively. P.L. 480 mandated that twenty-five
American research libraries -- including the Library of Congress
-- be supplied with a copy of virtually every book and journal
of research value published in Israel. The P.L. 480 program for
Israeli imprints, coordinated by the Library of Congress, lasted
nine years, from 1964 to 1973, and provided each of the participating
institutions with an average of sixty- five thousand items.

Am I Now? A Saying of Kwang-tse,
translated and produced by Yehuda Miklaf (Jerusalem, 1993).
This miniature book, produced at the Shalom Yehuda Press
in Jerusalem, contains facing-page translations into Hebrew
and English of a saying by the fourth-century B.C.E. philosopher
Kwang-tse. Printed and set by hand, it was produced in a
limited edition of seventy.
(Courtesy Yehuda Miklaf)
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Since 1973, substantial effort and many resources have been expended
to maintain this high level of acquisitions from Israel -- an
effort that is evident in the overall comprehensiveness of the
Library's collection of Hebrew-language materials. The collection
includes an extensive array of monographs; a broad selection of
Hebrew periodicals that encompass the current and the retrospective,
the popular as well as the scholarly; and a wide variety of Yiddish
and Hebrew newspapers reflecting every shade of opinion, from
the religious to the secular and from the far right to the extreme
left. In addition, an extensive collection of Israeli government
documents has been assembled.
In recent years, the Library has greatly augmented its collection
of modern examples of fine printing in Hebrew and has begun to
build a collection of Hebrew artists' books. Beginning with the
work of the twentieth-century pioneer Hebrew printer and book
designer Moshe Spitzer, the Library has collected works by such
Israeli master printers as Yehuda Miklaf and Ariel
Wardi. Represented as well are books designed and executed
by such artists as Ya'akov Agam,
Lynne Avadenka, Mordechai
Beck, Ya'akov Boussidan, Maty Grünberg, Metavel,
David Moss, and Igael Tumarkin.
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