The Kressel archive Yizkor Books Microform Collections Foyle-Montefiore Shandel/Lipson Hugo Gryn

Microform Collections

Through a most generous benefaction from the Catherine Lewis Foundation, the library has acquired microfiche catalogues of the holdings of major research libraries, and a large number of microform collections in various areas of Hebrew and Jewish studies. The catalogues and collections, comprising some 25,000 microfiches and 400 reels of film, are based on the holdings of the Harvard College Library, the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in New York, Hebrew Union College Library in Cincinnati, the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, the Steiniger collection of Newspaper cuttings, and the Jewish Biographical Archive. Together these collections make up a concentrated resource for research, which is unequalled in any Judaica Library in Europe.
The microform collections contain reproductions of over 4000 entire manuscripts and over 10,000 entire printed books (in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and German), and record for over 500,000 books and manuscripts in the field of Hebrew and Jewish Studies. There is much material on Hebrew printing and bibliography, including the complete works of Steinschneider. There is also extensive bio-biographical and archival documentation for the 19th and 20th centuries of Jewish life in Europe and Palestine, and especially rich biographical data relating to the Jewish contribution to music and the arts in the modern period.
For many of the collections there are detailed published catalogues or guides available in the Muller Library.


Catalogues and Bibliographies

Bodleian Library:
Geographical-Typographical Index to Moritz Steinschneider, Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana

Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati:
Recorded Music Catalogue
Includes also Hebrew-character title index, Hebrew-character song index and Roman-character song index.
Hebrew Title Catalogue
Bibliography of Hebrew Printing in Odessa

Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Jerusalem:
The Collective Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts
Recording 262,000 items from 700 libraries and private collections in 30 countries. 12 indexes, by author/name, title, subject, language, geographic name (places of origin, places mentioned), illuminated manuscripts, library. Detailed printed guide to this collection.

Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem:
Finding aids to the Manuscript and Archive Collections
Private Archives, comprising 6 card catalogues for: S. J. Agnon, M. Buber, Shaul Ginzburg, I. Manger, Y. Pilowsky, D. Sadan, and 146 files for some 146 personalities.
Collections, comprising 4 card catalogues, for: Schwadron autograph collection, portraits and photograph collection, air photographs of Palestine, and Arabic manuscripts in the A. S. Yahuda collection, and 20 files on a range of subjects.
Societies, comprising 6 files, including Archive of the oriental Studies, Jerusalem, and the Archive of the periodical Prozdor. With printed lists of contents.
Alphabetical and Classified Card Catalogue of Printed books
Including Hebrew characters, Arabic characters, Cyrillic characters, and Latin characters.
Judaica Collection Card Catalogue
Recording ca. 300,000 publications, comprising the largest Judaica collection in the world. With printed guide.


Collections and Archives

Documentation on Jewish Culture in Germany
Dokumentation zur jüdischen Kultur in Deutschland 1840-1940: Die Zeitungsausschnittsamlung Steiniger
Artists, visual and performing artists. Music, containing ca. 18,000 articles on ca.2400 Jewish composers, conductors, singers, musicians and musicologists.

Jewish Biographical Archive
Jüdisches Biographisches Archiv
Entries for ca. 150,000 individuals, excerpted from over 100 published sources. Detailed printed index.

Jewish Theological Seminary of America:
383 reels. With printed guides.
Adler Special Manuscript Collection (273 mss)
Benaim Collection of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic Manuscripts (134 mss)
Biblical Manuscripts (1071 mss)
History of Science (213 mss)
Kabbalah and Mysticism (700 mss)
Liturgy collection (ca. 800 mss)
Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (71 mss)
Philological Manuscripts (150 mss)
Philosophy Manuscripts (300+ mss)
Poetry and Belles-Lettres (378 mss)
Polemical Manuscripts (71 mss)
Steinschneider Collection (20 reels)
Hebrew Incunabula (109 incunables or incunable fragments)
Rare Books Collection (over 200 books in Hebrew and various Jewish languages)

Harvard College Library:
Hebrew Books
Biblical Commentaries (468 titles)
Haggadot and Liturgy (85 titles)
Homiletics (712 titles)
Codes of Jewish Law (286 titles)
Kabbalah and Hassidism (163 titles)
Religious Ethics (176 titles)
Responsa (549 titles)
Rabbinic Texts and Commentaries (759 titles)
Biography (135 titles)
Belles-Lettres (465 titles)
History (94 titles)
Judeo-Arabic (275 titles)
Judeo-Persian (16 titles)
Ladino (384 titles)
Hebrew Language and Grammar (44 titles)
Philosophy and Theology (323 titles)
With printed index

Yiddish Books from the Harvard College Library
Ca. 5500 fiches, reproducing full text of nearly 5000 books.

History and Annals of Hebrew Printing in the fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (13 reels)

The Montefiore Collection of Manuscripts

During his lifetime, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), the most famous Anglo-Jew of the 19th century and a patron of scholars, built up a unique and extremely valuable collection of manuscripts. The original collection was substantially enhanced by Dr. Moses Gaster (1856-1939), who purchased important manuscripts, formerly the property of Leopold Zunz, one of the founders of the “Science of Judaism”, and of the bibliophile Solomon Hayyim Halberstam. The collection, which was placed on loan in Jew’s College in 1897, and was put on microfiche in 1994, consists of the following parts:

  • Bible, Targum, Midrash, Commentaries, Talmud and Halakhah, and liturgy
  • Philosophy, Kabbalah, Poetry, Grammar and Lexicography, Mathematics and Astronomy etc.
  • Miscellaneous, Montefioriana and Additional Manuscripts
  • Montefiore Censuses

(For full details of the Manuscripts see Hartwig Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts of the Montefiore Library (London, 1904).)

The Trustees of the Montefiore Endowment at Ramsgate decided in October 2002 to place a complete set of microfiches of the Collection of manuscripts on long-term loan in the Leopold Muller Memorial Library. This set of microfiches is presently the only access to Collection.