Christ Church Library is pleased to announce the publication of a volume including an important contribution by Dr Rahel Fronda, who has been working on the prestigious collection of Hebrew early printed books and manuscripts at Christ Church.
Lavishly illustrated, Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries brings together a series of essays by experts in the field. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history from the tenth to the twentieth century.
Representing four centuries of collecting and 1000 years of Jewish history, this book draws attention to extraordinary Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges, among which the library at Christ Church which houses the largest collection in Oxford after the Bodleian. Highlights 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 prayerbooks and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England.
The essays included in the volume focus on outstanding works contained in the various collections, as well as the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors, such as Archbishop William Laud, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Venetian Jesuit Matteo Canonici, Benjamin Kennicott, Rabbi David Oppenheim and, as far as Christ Church is concerned, John Morris..
Contents
Foreword Simon Schama; Sponsor’s Preface Martin J. Gross; Introduction to the Collections César Merchán-Hamann; Chapter 1 The Laud Collection Giles Mandelbrote; Chapter 2 The Pococke Collection Benjamin Williams; Chapter 3 The Huntington Collection César Merchán-Hamann AND Simon Mills; 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; Conclusion Piet van Boxel; Further Reading; Notes; Contributors; Acknowledgements; Index .
Title: Treasures from Oxford Libraries
Editors: Rebecca Abrams and Cesar Merchan-Hamann
Date of Publication: May 2020
Publisher: Bodleian Library
ISBN-10: 1851245022
ISBN-13: 978-1851245024
Bibliographic details:
Hardcover: 304 pages
259 x 237 mm; 136 colour illustrations
Price: £35
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