Restarting the blog

We are happy to announce that after a long hiatus, the Yale University Library Judaica blog will begin active posting again. We’ve had some changes in the past two years, and we’re excited to share some of our new acquisitions. Please visit our website (http://www.library.yale.edu/judaica/) for access to our digitized exhibits before they are featured on the blog. In the mean time, here  are some current photos of the staff:

Acquisitions Assistant Julie Cohen, Judaica Curator Nanette Stahl, and Archive Assistant Hana Rudnick

Nanette, Student Assistant Matt Russo, Julie, and Hana

 

North African Workshop

In October of 2012, a group of scholars of North African Jewry came to Yale from Israel and France to study manuscripts from our North African Jewish Collection.  Professor Moshe Bar-Asher  of the Hebrew University was the convener of the gathering.  Each scholar worked on a document relating to his or her area of expertise.   At the end of each day, one of the scholars gave a lecture on some aspect of the history and culture of Jewish North Africa.  It was a most exciting time for all of us in the library and we hope to hold more colloquia in the future.  Thanks to a grant from the Arcadia Foundation,  we have been able to organize and house the manuscripts and enter them into an Excel chart.  Our next step will be to create a finding aid online which will enable scholars all over the world to ascertain what is in the collection.

The photo shows all the participants as well as the library staff.  The participants are each holding up the document on which he or she is working.

 

Haaretz

We are happy to announce that the Yale community now has full access to Haaretz Daily News, one of Israel’s premier news outlets.

English- http://www.haaretz.com/

Hebrew-  http://www.haaretz.co.il/

 

Natan Sharansky visits the Yale University Library

Natan Sharansky is a prominent Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who spent nine years in a Soviet prison for allegedly spying for the United States.  He is one of the heroes of the struggle of Jews to immigrate to Israel during the Soviet era.  Sharansky is the author of The Case for Democracy, Fear No Evil and Defending Identity. He is currently chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency and was recently in the news in his attempt to resolve the ongoing tensions between fundamentalist Jewish groups and Conservative and Reform women’s groups with regard to the right of women to lead their own services at the Western Wall.

The Yale University Library recently had the honor of welcoming him to the Judaica Collection in which Nanette Stahl, Librarian for Judaic Studies, showed him several of the illuminated Hebrew manuscripts she had recently acquired. Joining them are Harvey Goldblatt, Professor of Medieval and Slavic Literature and Chairman of the Slavic Language and Literature Department as well as Master of Pierson College, and Tatjana Lorkovic, Librarian for Slavic Studies.

 

Judaic Studies Colloquium

On April 10, 2013 the Program in Judaic Studies held its annual colloquium in the Judaic Studies reading room.  Two speakers from the Program gave presentations on the research in which they are currently engaged.  Eve Krakowski, Hilda & Jacob Blaustein Post-Doctoral Fellow spoke on “Jewish Marriage Choices in Medieval Egypt: Towards an Anthropology of Rabbanite Legal Practice. ”   And, Christine Hayes (shown in the photo) the Robert F & Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Religious Studies spoke on “ ‘ In the West, they laughed at him:’ The Babylonian Talmud’s Mocking Realists.”  A light dinner was served between the two presentations.  The colloquium is an annual event in which both faculty members, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students have an opportunity to talk about their work and receive feed-back from their colleagues.

 

Visit from Ambassador Ido Aharoni

Ambassador Ido Aharoni, Consul General of Israel in New York recently visited Yale and stopped by the library to view several of the recently acquired illuminated manuscripts that were in the Judaic Studies Librarian’s office.  He has been a member of Israel’s Foreign Service since 1991.  In the photo Judaic Librarian, Nanette Stahl, is showing Ambassador Aharoni a new purchase.