Category Archives: Hebrew printing

Launch of The Weisz Western Sephardi Collection

Thanks to the generosity of the Joir and Kato Weisz Foundation, which acquired the collection from the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation of London and donated it to the Centre, the Leopold Muller Memorial Library has been privileged to receive the Weisz Western Sephardi Collection.

The collection was assembled mainly by the late Dr Richard Barnett, the Honorary Archivist of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation. It comprises over 500 items, including books, manuscripts, sermons, rabbinic responsa and commentaries, as well as letters by Sephardi Jews, some of them rabbis or members of the Congregation or of the mother congregation in Amsterdam; there are also works by Christian Hebraists which witness to the continued exchange of opinions and knowledge between the members of Jewish communities and their host nations. There are many examples of printed ephemera, including notably prayers for special occasions and calendars, and also printed and other material for the internal use of the communities, such as community and philanthropic societies’ byelaws, ordinances and lists of members. Notable is the only known copy of the first edition of the Prayer Book for Sephardi usage printed in England, in 1721.

There is a rich trove of works in Spanish and Portuguese, including both translations from the Hebrew and original works, all aimed at making it possible for newly arrived Crypto-Jews, also known as marranos, to acquire a functioning knowledge of Judaism. The works encompass Bible, prayer books, apologetic treatises and practical manuals of kashrut and purity; in short, manuals for people who had all but forgotten everything about Judaism but who knew that their families had once been Jewish.

Most of the printed material comes from Amsterdam and some is from London. There are also works printed in Alexandria, Algiers, Altona-Hamburg, Barbados, Basel, Bordeaux, Corfu, Curaçao, Florence, Gibraltar, The Hague, Livorno, Madrid, Naples, Oporto, Paris, Nice, Utrecht, Verona and Venice – a true atlas of the Sephardi Diaspora.

 

The Centre is grateful to the Weisz Foundation for the donation, to Mr Edgar Samuel for initiating the transfer of the collection and to Dr Jeremy Schonfield for facilitating the process.

WEISZ WESTERN SEPHARDI COLLECTION LECTURE

Tuesday 15th November 2016, 6pm
at the Clarendon Institute

Professor David Abulafia
(Cambridge)
The first Sephardim in the Atlantic Islands

Refreshments will follow

Sefer Tehilim = Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523) (shelfmark PB449)

One of the smallest books in our newly acquired Weisz Sephardi Collection is a Book of Psalms in Hebrew. Together with its binding, it is 11cm by 8cm in size. This tiny volume was published by Johann Froben in Basel in 1523.

Psalterium Hebraicum (Basle: Johann Froben, 1523)

Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523)

Portrait of Johann Froben by Hans Holbein the Younger, Hampton Court

Portrait of Johann Froben by Hans Holbein the Younger, Hampton Court

 

The colophon at the end of the volume says:
BASILEAE IN AEDIBVS IOANNIS FROBENII, MENSE MARTIO. AN. M.D.XXIII.
“Basel, in the house of Johann Froben, March, 1523”

Colophon, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basle: Johann Froben, 1523)

Colophon, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523)

Johann Froben (ca. 1460 Hammelburg – 1527 Basel), one of the most prominent printers of sixteenth-century Basel. He established a printing house in Basel together with the already successful printer, Johannes Auerbach (1443-1513). Froben collaborated with leading scholars of the age, such as Erasmus and Konrad Pellikan. Many of his publications were illustrated by woodcuts designed by two renowned artists, Hans Holbein the Younger and Urs Graf. The woodcut decorating the title page of this Hebrew book of Psalters, contains in its centre Froben’s printer’s device: the staff of Mercury surrounded by two crowned snakes and a dove. The device was designed by Hans Holbein the Younger. Holbein also painted two portraits of Froben, one of which is on display in Hampton Court.

 

Title page, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basle: Johann Froben, 1523)

Title page, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523)

Johann Froben's printer's device

Title page, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523)

Printer’s waste, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523)

A closer look reveals that even the binding of the volume can offer something to the curious-minded: it has Latin manuscript waste in its binding — a widespread way of recycling discarded parchment or paper leaves.

Printer's waste, Psalterium Hebraicum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1523)

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam and Canadian Zionism: bound by a book

Menasseh ben Israel’s edition of Esrim ve-Arba’ah (Amsterdam, 1637-1639), Weiss Western Sephardi Collection, shelfmark: PB386.

This small, octavo Hebrew Bible was printed by Menasseh ben Israel, the famous Amsterdam scholar and printer, “the founder of Anglo-Jewry” – as Cecil Roth called him. Menasseh printed three complete Hebrew Bibles in the 1630s. Like his two previous Hebrew Bibles, this edition also has an engraved title page with an architectural design. It provides information about the publication both in Hebrew and underneath in Latin. The Hebrew mentions Menasseh ben Israel, while the Latin gives Ioannis Ianssonius as the publisher. The reason for this is that this Bible was intended to accompany a Greek and Latin New Testament published by Jan Jansson, a Christian publisher and cartographer.

Esrim_vearbaah_1639

There is a discrepancy in Hebrew and the Latin dates of publication: the Hebrew date is given on the title page in a chronogram citing Psalms (5:10): “My beloved is pure” (שנת דודי צ”ח לפרט קטן). The numerical value of the word צח is 98 which is an abbreviation for anno mundi 5398, that is, 1637 or 1638 CE. The Latin date is however 1639.

This Bible is not accompanied by an introduction; the title page is immediately followed by the biblical text. Unlike Menasseh’s two earlier Hebrew Bibles, this edition is vocalized. The text is printed in two columns, with Masoretic annotations and verse numbers in Hebrew characters in the margins. The Five Megillot (Scrolls) are printed at the end of the Pentateuch, and a table of the Haftarot (additional readings from the Prophetic books) can be found at the end of the volume followed by the colophon of the printer.

Esrim_vearbaah_1639_colophon

The provenance of this copy in the Weisz Western Sephardi Collection takes us further away from Amsterdam and Europe. On one of the last flyleaves, there is an ownership inscription by “Clarence Isaac de Sola.” Could this Clarence be Clarence da Sola, the third son of Montreal’s famous rabbi-scholar, Abraham de Sola? The London-born Abraham was a leader of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation Sheerith Israel (Remnant of Israel) in Montreal, Canada. Clarence became a wealthy businessman with deep interest in the welfare his Jewish community as well as in Anglo-Jewish matters and corresponded with Moses Gaster. Thus, it is very likely that a book previously owned by him ended up in the collection of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London. Clarence was also involved in the Canadian Zionist movement and kept himself informed about Zionist events worldwide.

005

One could say that this copy of Menasseh ben Israel’s Bible certainly got into the right hands: Menasseh himself was a diplomat and got actively involved in the readmission of the Jews in England. Clarence followed a similar path by pursuing the welfare of the Jews and propagating the Zionist cause two and a half centuries later.

Leopold Muller Memorial Library

The Library is moving during the summer vacation into central Oxford, for more information about how this will affect readers see our previous blog post or contact Library staff: muller.library@ochjs.ac.uk.
As we prepare to move we have also been looking back into the history of the Library at Yarnton Manor.

The Library

The Library

Forty Years ago: 1974
The centre was established in 1972 and moved to Yarnton Manor in 1973/1974. The Barn was converted into a Library space and it has been the home of the main Library ever since. Whilst still in Oxford the Library acquired the Kressel Library (25,000 volumes) and the Kressel Archive(over half a million items), which formed the basis of the Library’s collection.

Thirty Years ago: 1984

A further consignment from the Kressel collection was received between 1982 and 1985.For the Library this period was and space became an increasing issue. These problems are strongly expressed in the annual report about the library 1984/1985: ‘There are 30 tea-chests and 14 cardboard boxes full of books as well as innumerable heaps of books on the floor, and yet very little spare shelving to put them on. The situation has dictated a strategy of the ruthless disposal of all duplicate copies, and even the withdrawal from the shelves of older books superseded by recent scholarship’.

 

Our reading rooms

Change of name…
At a ceremony in October 1992 the Library changed its name to the Leopold Muller Memorial Library after receiving £1 million donation from the Leopold Muller Estate.

 

Twenty Years ago: 1994
The Library had grown and many of the materials, including the Qumran collection and the Kressel archive were moved to the Exeter Farm site, which was purchased by the centre in 1991/1992.
At the time the library lent only to Manor residents, and proudly reports loaning 2,012 books during the academic year.

B  010

Ten Years ago: 2004
The Library completed a major milestone in the completion of the online western language catalogue, as part of the Oxford University Library Catalogues (OLIS).

In 2004 Louis Jacob’s extensive library of over 14,000 volumes was donated to the library. Particularly noteworthy are the section on Kabbalah, mysticism and Hasidism, areas which the library was previously lacking. The collection made the Leopold Muller Memorial library an outstanding place for the study of rabbinic Judaism. The collection is used extensively and in 2013 an Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies (OSAJS) was held at the centre drawing together international scholars to research. The seminar, ‘Orthodoxy, Theological Debate, and Contemporary Judaism: Exploring Questions Raised in the Thought of Louis Jacobs’ ran from January to June and the library curated an s archive to coincide with the project.

periodicals

2014
This year the Library put together an exhibition to showcase the the Western Hebrew Library rare book collection deposited on long-term loan from the New West End Synagogue. This collection will complement the library’s growing rare book collection. The Library contains an outstanding collection of early modern Hebrew prints.

W F823

The library will be moving this summer and we look forward to welcoming you to our new home.
Watch this space for 2024!

A.Rosenthal Ltd. Antiquarian Bookseller: Collection

The Oxford based firm A. Rosenthal Ltd., specialises in selling Judaica and Hebraica related books. The antiquarian book seller deposited some of their back catalogues, card catalogues, ledgers and book plates amongst other things to the Leopold Muller Memorial Library.

Rosenthal compiled book catalogues of rare and unusual material and grouped them into specific subject areas. Including these two catalogues pictured.

catalogues

The catalogue of ‘Sixteenth Century Hebraica’ was a list of books intended to be sold together as a complete collection. The collection included Hebrew books printed between 1505 and 1609. Rosenthal created this collection, in collaboration with Bernard M. Rosenthal in New York. The books were not part of a previous collection; instead the booksellers brought together books that they perceived to be valuable and also rare. The description of the collection highlights the uniqueness of the texts chosen, favouring first editions, as well as only including books that were complete and in good condition despite their age. The books in this catalogue were mostly printed in Italy, although there are also books from rare presses in Greece and Italy. Catalogues such as this provide valuable insights and information into early Hebrew printed books, but also the antiquarian book trade in the twentieth century.

ledger

The Rosenthal collection also includes company ledgers and sales books, which include many famous names within the field of Jewish studies. Other related items such as letters and book plates are also part of the collection.

Book plate1 book plate 2
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