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Country
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CA
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Language of name of institution
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eng
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Contact information: postal address
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120 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5
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Contact information: phone number
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001 416 978 5285
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Reference number
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Friedberg MSS
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Type of reference number
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Archival reference number
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Title (official language of the state)
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Friedberg Collection
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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Albert Dov Friedberg
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Date note
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10th century/16 century
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Language(s)
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heb
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Extent
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45 manuscripts and other items
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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The Friedberg Collection is a collection of Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books. It contains 45 medieval manuscripts, a small collection of Genizah fragments, 21 incunabula, and many other works of exceptional quality and significance. One of its most precious items is a 10th-century codex of Halakhot pesukot, one of the earliest intact Hebrew codices in existence. Another highlight of this collection is a 15th-century copy of the Zohar, written in Crete by Shabbetai Balbo, whose colophon attributes its ownership to Shabbetai Zevi.
The Friedberg Collection includes a few manuscripts produced in Medieval Spain:
MSS 9-005: Ḥamishah ḥumshe Torah (The Five Books of Torah), originally written in the Middle East in the 10th century and completed in 1188 in Girona (Catolonia) by a scribe named Meshullam ben Todros, who dedicated this work to the patron, David ben Solomon. This is the oldest Bible partially composed in the Iberian Peninsula known so far.
MSS 5-001: Masoretic Bible written by the scribe Judah ibn Merwas in Toledo in 1307.
MSS 2-119: Rashi's Perush ‘al ha-Torah (Commentary on the Torah), written in square Sephardic script, produced in Spain in the 13th-14th centuries.
Among the incunabula comprised in the Friedberg Collection, there is a Torah printed by Eliezer ben Abraham Alantansi in Hijar (Spain) in 1490, as well as a copy of Nahmanides' Ḥiddushe ha-Torah printed by Eliezer Toledano in Lisbon in 1489.
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Archival history
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The Friedberg Collection was donated to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library by Albert Friedberg from 1995 to 2012.
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Administrative / Biographical history
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Albert Dov Friedberg is the founder of Friedberg Mercantile Group Ltd., a philanthropist and collector of rare Judaica. In 1995, he donated most of his personal collection to the University of Toronto, where he completed his PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations in 2008 with a thesis on Maimonides. One year earlier, he had founded the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society, whose major digital initiative, the Friedberg Geniza Project, is devoted to making fragments and documents from the Cairo Geniza available to the public through their cataloguing, transcription, translation, and digitization.
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
