Kiev Fellowships Announced

from the George Washington University website: "Kiev Judaica Research Fellowship Winners Announced The I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection of the George Washington University Libraries is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2012-2013 Kiev Judaica Collection Research Fellowships. Awarded every two years, the Fellowships provide stipends of $750 for a GW undergraduate and $2,500 for a graduate, post-graduate, or independent scholar to conduct research using the Kiev Judaica Collection. The Senior Fellowship has been awarded this year to Professor Barry Trachtenberg , director of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of Albany, State University of New York. Prof. Trachtenberg will make use of the bibliographic and other resources of the Kiev Collection in the completion of his book-length study on the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye, the first comprehensive encyclopedia in Yiddish, launched in Berlin in 1932 on the eve of the Nazi period. Prof. Trachtenberg, who received his doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, has lectured and published widely on the history of Yiddish scholarship. "I'm thrilled to have been awarded the Kiev Fellowship. The staff and diverse Yiddish and Hebrew-language resources of the Kiev Judaica Collection will be of tremendous help with my research project on the Yiddish encyclopedia," said Dr. Trachtenberg. The recipient of this year’s Kiev Junior Fellowship is Ms. Aviv Becher, a Judaic Studies and English major at GW. Her planned Honors thesis in Judaic Studies and English will examine the relevance of modern Hebrew poetry to Jewish religious life in Israel and the Diaspora. In the course of her interdisciplinary research, Ms. Becher will be able to make use of a variety of Hebrew, literary and liturgical materials in the Kiev Collection. Ms. Becher stated: “I am grateful for the opportunity to deepen my studies of Modern Hebrew poetry by tracing historically the theological roots of the discipline in the Kiev Collection. The Collection is such an asset to the university and I feel fortunate to have such free access to its holdings.” These awards mark the second iteration of the Kiev Fellowships. The first Senior Fellow was Dr. Jonathan Skolnik, Assistant Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who worked on German, Hebrew, and Yiddish Writers in 1920s Berlin, focusing in particular on German-Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler. The first Junior Fellow was Ms. Robin Janofsky, a GW History major and pre-Law student, who wrote about the American Jewish community’s relationship to Abraham Lincoln; her Honors thesis is now held in the Lincoln Presidential Library. Established by Dr. Ari and Phyllis Kiev in 1996, the Kiev Judaica Collection is based on the private library of Dr. Kiev’s father, Rabbi Dr. I. Edward Kiev (1905-1975), one of the preeminent Judaica librarians of the 20th century. Housed since 1998 in the Kiev Room of the Gelman Library, the collection contains more than 28,000 volumes, along with Jewish graphic art, archives, recorded music, ephemera, artifacts and ritual objects. For more information visit http://library.gwu.edu/collections/kiev"

Updates from the Kiev Collection

FYI - several new web and social media pages devoted to the I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection at George Washington University, Washington, DC : KIEV JUDAICA COLLECTION WEBSITE: http://library.gwu.edu/collections/kiev FACEBOOK PAGE FOR THE KIEV COLLECTION: http://www.facebook.com/IEdwardKievJudaicaCollection PINTEREST BOARD FOR THE KIEV COLLECTION: http://pinterest.com/gelmanlibrary/i-edward-kiev-judaica-collection/ PINTEREST BOARD FOR BOOKS BY DR. ARI KIEV: http://pinterest.com/gelmanlibrary/books-by-dr-ari-kiev/ with collegial greetings from the cloud. :) -- Brad Sabin Hill Curator The I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW, suite 709C Washington, DC 20052 USA

September 12 in New York: Lecture and Exhibition Opening at Columbia

From Michelle Chesner:

August 21: Lecture on 16th-century Hebrew Books at the Library of Congress

September 27-28: Conference on Manuscripts in Multiple Languages and Scripts

MANUSCRITOS PLURILINGÜES Y PLURIGRÁFICOS DE ORIENTE Y OCCIDENTE Comité: Giuseppe Mandalà, Alex Metcalfe, Inmaculada Pérez Martín 27-28 Septiembre 2012 Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas C/ Albasanz 26-28, 28037 Madrid The conference deals with the evidence of manuscripts and handwritten documents with multilingual and/or multigraphic structures in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and/or Greek. The congress aims to connect research frameworks forging new, cross-cultural debates between disciplines, including palaeography, codicology, history, art history, linguistics, and sociology. Particular attention will be given to three regions: 1. Sicily and the Italian mainland 2. The Iberian Peninsula 3. Syria–Palestine The chronological range is broadly medieval, from the sixth to fifteenth centuries. Papers will be based around research aspects of the following two themes: 1. manuscripts: including holy books, scientific and legal texts, literature and theology, glossaries, lexicons, grammars, and other texts for learning a foreign language 2. documents (public, semi-public and private) with particular reference to multilingual chanceries and/or inter-state relationships in the medieval Mediterranean. Línea “Oriente en Occidente. Desafiando fronteras”, CCHS, CSIC Directora: Mercedes García-Arenal Coordinación científica: Giuseppe Mandalà Apoyo técnico: Regina Chatruch del Rio, Amina Naciri Azzouz contacto: giuseppe.mandala@cchs.csic.es tel. +34 916022698 www.cchs.csic.es

Updates to Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts at NLI

FROM H-JUDAIC: From: Yael Okun [mailto:Yael.Okun@nli.org.il] Sent: Tue 7/31/2012 9:13 AM Subject: Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts Catalogue We are delighted to announce that The National Library of Israel's online catalogue now includes more than 4000 linked records to freely available digitized Hebrew manuscripts online (post-dating the Dead Sea Scrolls) from institutions around the world, including 1000 on the NLI website itself. These represent many more Judaica records than are currently available through either the Digital Scriptorium or the Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts or similar digitized manuscript aggregators. As we continue to add links, we aim to serve as the global access portal for Hebrew digitized manuscripts. Most of the scans are full color; only a minority are in black and white - namely, digitizations of microfilms rather than scans from the original manuscript. Usually, these represent full codices, but sometimes single pages serve as samples of a larger work, or alternatively represent the complete extant fragment. We do not link items accessed for a fee or via subscription (thus, Cairo Genizah items available via the Friedberg Genizah Project or similar projects are not included). Also, as we don't catalog individual Genizah fragments, digitized items available at the Princeton University Genizah Project (The Princeton Geniza Project ) are not included in our database. We are aware of, and are working to include, the digitized microfilms of JTS and HUC mss and the Chaim Reich collection facsimiles, now being uploaded at Hebrew Books.org and its affiliate Hebrew Manuscripts.org . Finally, we realize that many online items are not yet included in our collection of microfilmed manuscripts and thus do not appear in our catalogue. Please be patient as we work to rectify the situation. For items that may be in error, or incomplete, or refer to unstable links, or were completely missed, we encourage you to inform us so we may correct and add to our growing collection. Institutions that upload Judaica manuscripts are urged to let us know so we may add links from/to our catalog records as soon as possible. 1. Search for Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts The National Library of Israel's home page is The National Library of Israel ; from there, click on the Library's "Online Catalogue," and then to "Manuscripts" in the drop down menu of "libraries." (Or go directly to IMHM Online Catalogue ) To locate all records with links to digitized manuscripts online, search in our online catalogue "Basic search [????? ?????]:" under "subject[??????] " field, type "digitized manuscripts[??? ??. ?????] ". To limit the search to a specific subject, search under "Advanced search [????? ?????] " with items "digitized [?????]" and the relevant subject (e.g. ???? for all biblical related mss). To sort the results by location, click on "source/title [???? ]" in the upper section of the screen. Results may appear in either "table" or "brief" formats. 2. Browse Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts To simply browse through all digitized manuscripts on the NLI digital website itself (at this point, about 1000 items, including but not limited to 250 from the Rosenthaliana collection in Amsterdam; 100 from Columbia University in NY; 50 from the Braginsky collection in Zurich; as well as nearly 400 of NLI's own collection), click Digital Collections at The National Library of Israel . 3. Rabbinics Mss Online The old Talmud Mss Online website is in the process of being dismantled. In its place, we are happy to refer readers to the new and more comprehensive Rabbinics Manuscripts Online (still in beta mode but to be updated significantly on a consistent basis). We must clarify a legal point: just because we link to, or feature on our website, fully digitized manuscripts, either owned by The National Library or other institutions, this does not represent permission for use from either The National Library or those other institutions, for any use exceeding the Fair Use provisions defined by law, which include private research. Only explicit permission in writing from the institutional owners of the manuscripts themselves and the copyright holders may grant authorization for additional use. Department of Manuscripts & The Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts The National Library of Israel Jerusalem, Israel

Press Release from Library of Congress--100 Years of the Hebraica Collection at LOC

Library of Congress to Mark Centennial of Hebraic Collection With Publication, Exhibition A century ago, New York philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff purchased an initial collection of nearly 10,000 Hebrew books and pamphlets from bibliophile and book dealer Ephraim Deinard for the Library of Congress. This gift formed the nucleus of what is today one of the world’s greatest collections of Hebraic materials and Judaica, comprising some 200,000 items. The Library is celebrating the centennial of its Hebraic Collection with the publication this month of "Perspectives on the Hebraic Book: The Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lectures at the Library of Congress" and an exhibition titled "Words Like Sapphires: 100 Years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress, 1912-2012." "Perspectives on the Hebraic Book" comprises the texts of the Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lectures on the Hebraic Book, which were delivered annually from 2000-2009 at the Library of Congress. The compilation is edited by Peggy K. Pearlstein, head of the Hebraic Section in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division. The broad scope of the lectures was designed to reflect the wide-ranging scholarly interests of Myron M. Weinstein (1927-1998), who served his 29-year career at the Library of Congress in the Hebraic Section, which he headed from 1980 until his retirement in 1984. The lecture series and its publication in book form were made possible by Weinstein’s sisters, Muriel Sterne and the late Helen Avati, with additional support from Project Judaica Trust Fund. Each chapter analyzes unique perspectives on the Hebrew manuscript and book. Joseph R. Hacker, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discusses the printing of Hebrew books in the 16th-century Ottoman Empire. Grace Cohen Grossman, Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, examines 18th- and 19th- century Hebrew prayer broadsides. Bernard Dov Cooperman, University of Maryland, offers a view of the impact of printing on Italian Jewish piety. Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University, chronicles the Jewish book in America. Zachary M. Baker, Stanford University, reflects on the Yiddish theater and its legacy. Marsha L. Rozenblitt, University of Maryland, explores 19th-century Viennese Jewry through the Isak Noa Mannheimer prayer book. Gershon Greenberg, American University, investigates the struggles of Hasidic religious thinkers to find a response to the Holocaust. Evelyn M. Cohen, an independent scholar, compares two 15th-century Joel ben Simeon manuscripts. Doris A. Hamburg, National Archives and Records Administration, describes the conservation of the 1478 Joel ben Simeon manuscript known as "The Washington Haggadah," which is housed in the Library of Congress. The rare item was rebound by the Library of Congress before its display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last spring. "Perspectives on the Hebraic Book: The Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lectures at the Library of Congress," a 240-page softcover book with 30 illustrations, is available for $35 in the Library of Congress Shop, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557, or shop on the Internet at www.loc.gov/shop. "Words Like Sapphires: 100 Years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress, 1912-2012," will be on view Oct. 25, 2012, through March 16, 2013, in the South Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. The exhibition, made possible by generous support from the Abby and Emily Rapoport Trust Fund at the Library of Congress, will feature more than 60 items dating from the 7th century through the present. Items from 15 countries in nine languages include Hebrew manuscripts, incunabula (pre-1501 books), torah scrolls, Yiddish sheet music and contemporary limited edition artists’ books. More than half of the items in the exhibition have never been displayed. The Hebraica publication and exhibition are part of the Library’s "Celebration of the Book," which includes an exhibition, June 25 through Sept. 29, on "Books That Shaped America" and a series of programs, symposia and other events that explore the important and varied ways that books influence our lives. The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 151 million items in various languages, disciplines, and formats. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.