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Pekidim & Amarkalim collection The Pekidim and Amarkalim (officers and treasurers) formed an international organization whose purpose was to coordinate the fundraising to support impoverished Jews in Palestine. The organization maintained close contacts with the leaders of the Jewish communities in the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. The archive, which contains 10,100 incoming letters, is a very important source for the early history of the Jewish settlement in Palestine in modern times. •
Jacob Israël de Haan archive Jacob Israël de Haan was not one to keep things. He was prolific in his correspondence, but destroyed almost every letter he received and requested the recipients of his letters do likewise. He also did away with all manuscripts and preparatory stages of his books once they were published. That his archive, comprising four boxes of handwritten material and three with copies and clippings, exists is partially due to the fact that he was murdered, after which his house was sealed and his papers returned to his widow. De Haan also presented the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana with material during his lifetime and more has been added to the archive since it was acquired. The archive contains varied material dating from 1904-1984 (mostly 1904-1924), including correspondence, publications, lectures, poems, and photos. The archive contains few letters from De Haan's wife and family, mostly written after 1919. Meanwhile, all surviving business letters are from after 1923. The note of the law lectures De Haan gave at the University of Amsterdam and the Law School in Jerusalem remain, as well as notebooks with drafts of hundreds of poems, published and unpublished. •
Esslingen Machzor Arguably the most well-known manuscript of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana is the Esslingen
Machzor. Completed by the scribe Kalonymos ben Judah on 12 January 1290 in
Esslingen, it is a machzor for
Yom Kippur and
Sukkot. The manuscript is of a type of prayer book created in
Ashkenaz in the mid-1200s and produced for about a century. These
codices are all very large, suggesting they were made for community use. This is confirmed by the inscriptions in some volumes, their luxurious execution, and their profuse decoration. The Esslingen Machzor has been digitised and made available online together with its counterpart, held at the
Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. •
Sefer Or Zarua The Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana holds a late thirteenth century copy of
Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna's famous work,
Sefer Or Zarua. It was his
magnum opus, and he is therefore often referred to as Isaac Or Zarua. Despite its nature as a
halakhic work,
Sefer Or Zarua provides plenty of historical information in the form of everyday traditions and local customs across Europe that makes it an interesting source for both religious and medieval historians. This manuscript is one of only two extant medieval copies, the other being held at the
British Library in London, and the basis for the first published edition of the work, published in 1862 in
Zhytomyr. The
Sefer Or Zarua preserves one of the earliest versions of the story of
Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. •
Sefer Mitzwot Katan The
Sefer Mitzwot Katan, SeMaK, or Small Book of Precepts, was composed by
Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil in 1280, and is an abridged copy of the Great Book of Precepts by
Moses ben Jacob of Coucy. The manuscript in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana was copied by Hannah, daughter of Menachem Zion. It was extremely rare for women to write Hebrew medieval manuscripts. Indeed, fewer than ten female scribes are known compared with over four thousand known male scribes. However, these figures can be misleading as the majority of manuscripts remain anonymous. Many girls were taught to read, but only those in families of scholars or scribes were taught to write, so there can nevertheless only be few more female scribes of medieval manuscripts. It cannot be ascertained whether Hannah was from a scholarly family, but given the quality of her writing, it is highly likely. Upon finishing her copy of the SeMaK, Hannah signed and dated it on 10 June 1386. •
Leipnik Haggadah The Hamburg-Altona school of Hebrew illuminated manuscripts was part of the revival of Hebrew manuscript illumination in the eighteenth century, and one of its most influential scribes was Joseph, son of David of Leipnik. Only thirteen manuscripts, all
Haggadot written by Jodeph of Leipnik have been found, of which the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana Leipnik Haggadah is one. This Haggadah appears to have been intended as a personal gift and includes an abridged version of Abravanel's commentary on the Haggadah, and a short mystical commentary. The Leipnik Haggadah was based on the two editions of the Amsterdam Haggadah (1695 and 1712), as was standard for eighteenth-century Haggadah manuscripts. ==References==