Stephen A. Schwarzman Building > Collections & Reading Rooms > Dorot Jewish Division

Manuscripts and Early Printed Books

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The breadth of the Dorot Jewish Division rests on a foundation of early rarities. These treasures include forty fifteenth-century books and over 1,500 sixteenth-century works. These first texts of Jewish scholarship disseminated by the newly invented printing press had a lasting impact on Jewish thought and are the root of many areas of study. Among these riches are the Arba'ah Turim, a code of law by Jacob ben Asher printed in 1475 and the earliest dated Hebrew book extant. Also notable are the Sefer Middot, an ethical treatise published in 1542, which is one of the earliest printed Yiddish books, and Moses Almosnino's Regimento de la Vida (1564), the first printed original work in Ladino or Judeo-Spanish. Several ornately illustrated manuscript marriage contracts including some from the seventeenth-century are among the most beautiful of the Division's holdings.

The Dorot Jewish Division also houses many modern treasures, the original source material that provides invaluable insight into the turbulent history of the Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perhaps the most important resource for this scholarship is the extensive collection of newspapers and periodicals printed in Europe and America in the last two centuries. Publications printed in Central and Eastern Europe, many in German, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, and Czech, describe the day-to-day cultural, religious, and social events in the lives of the once-flourishing Jewish communities. Rare publications printed for the communities of Jewish immigrants within America's cities document the conditions facing the newly arrived. In many cases, the Library's issues are the only extant copies.

The Dorot Jewish Division possesses one of the largest collections of "Yizkor," or memorial, books that exist outside of Israel. The volumes, assembled by survivors of communities liquidated by the Nazis, give a full account of the employment, customs, and lifestyles of people in a world that is no more. The maps, illustrations, and commentary contained in the "Yizkor" book are often the only trace remaining of entire communities and have wide historical value.