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Distributed for Bodleian Library Publishing

Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries

Representing four centuries of collecting and a thousand years of Jewish history, this book brings together Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the extraordinary collections include a fragment of Maimonides’ autograph draft of the Mishneh Torah, the earliest dated fragment of the Talmud, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, stunning festival prayer books, and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England. Lavishly illustrated essays by experts in the field bring these outstanding works to life, exploring the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors.
 
Saved for posterity by religious scholarship, intellectual rivalry, and political ambition, these extraordinary collections also detail the consumption and circulation of knowledge across the centuries, forming a social and cultural history of objects moved across borders from person to person. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history.

304 pages | 136 color plates | 9 1/2 x 10 1/4 | © 2020

Art: Art--General Studies

Jewish Studies


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Reviews

"Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries [is] a handsome volume of coffee-table size. . . . After the shuttering of physical libraries during the pandemic, and as library budgets continue to shrink, it is right and good to remember the debt of gratitude we owe the great libraries and librarians for preserving our historical treasures—not to mention all those who brought this fine book into being."

Jewish Review of Books

"Today, one of the greatest collections of Jewish books in the world happens to reside in the Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford. Although the library’s two largest bequests of Hebrew books came from Jewish collectors, many of the most precious Hebrew manuscripts were donated or sold to the Bodleian by Christian collectors. . . . In the most fascinating feature of Jewish Treasures­—a feature never before attempted in a comparable volume about a collection of Jewish books—each of the work’s seven central chapters relates the story of one of the Bodleian’s Hebrew collections and, even more interestingly, the career of the collector behind it."

Mosaic Magazine

"A gorgeous book... Organized by chapters telling the stories of their Jewish and more often Christian collectors, it discusses, and shows in many beautiful plates, the greatest Jewish items in the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges’ libraries. The editors, Rebecca Abrams and Cesar Merchan-Hamann, combine Western history,Jewish history, art history, and Oxford history in this beautiful and fascinating book."

Elliott Abrams | Mosaic Magazine

Table of Contents

Librarian's Foreword Richard Ovenden

Preface Martin J. Gross

Introduction to the Bodleian Library & College Collections César Merchán-Hamann

Chapter 1 The Laud Collection Giles Mandelbrote

Chapter 2 The Pococke Collection Benjamin Williams

Chapter 3 The Huntington Collection Simon Mills and César Merchán-Hamann 

Chapter 4 The Kennicott Collection Theo Dunkelgrün

Chapter 5 The Canonici Collection Dorit Raines

Chapter 6 The Oppenheim Collection Joshua Teplitsky

Chapter 7 The Michael Collection Saverio Campanini

Chapter 8 The Genizah Collection Nadio Vidro

Chapter 9 The College Library Collections Rahel Fronda

From Collectors to Readers Piet van Boxel

Notes

Further Reading

Contributors

Picture Credits

Index

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