Hebraic Section
About the Hebraic Collections
The Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress has long been recognized
as one of the world's foremost centers for the study of Hebrew
and Yiddish materials. Established in 1914 as part of the Division
of Semitica and Oriental Literature, its beginnings can be traced
to Jacob H. Schiff's gift in 1912 of nearly 10,000 books and pamphlets
from the private collection of Ephraim Deinard, a well-known bibliographer
and bookseller.
In the years that followed this initial gift, the Library has
developed and expanded its Hebraic holdings to include all 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, and Amharic. The section's holdings are
especially strong in the areas of the Bible and rabbinics, liturgy,
Hebrew language and literature, responsa, and Jewish history. Extensive
collections of printed editions of Passover Haggadot have been
assembled, as well as a comprehensive collection of Holocaust memorial
volumes.
The Hebraic Section received a second major boost as a result
of the enactment of Public Law 480 in 1958, through which 25 American
research libraries (including the Library of Congress) were supplied
with a copy of virtually every book and journal of research value
published in Israel. The PL-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 65,000 items over the course of the program
.
Since 1973, substantial efforts and resources have been expended
to maintain this high level of acquisitions from Israel--efforts
reflected in the overall comprehensiveness of the Library's current
collection of Hebrew language materials. Almost 150,000 items are
housed in a stack area adjacent to the section and are available
for examination by researchers and scholars. The collection includes
an extensive range of monographs; a broad selection of Hebrew periodicals,
current and retrospective, popular as well as scholarly; and a
variety of Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers reflecting all shades
of opinion, from the religious to the secular and from the far
right to the extreme left. Of particular interest to genealogists
is the Library's comprehensive collection of Holocaust 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.
The section's treasures include examples from among the first
books printed in Portugal, Turkey, and on the African continent.
With 24 Hebrew incunables housed in the section--including works
from the major 15th-century Hebrew presses--and an additional 15
in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, the Library
of Congress ranks as one of the world's most important public collections
of Hebrew incunables--books printed before the year 1501. Unique
to its collections are more than 1,000 original Yiddish plays,
in manuscript or typescript form written between the end of the
19th and the middle of the 20th centuries, that were submitted
for copyright registration to the Library of Congress, and intended
for the American Yiddish theater.
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