Manuscripts
Item
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Country
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US
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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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500 West 185th St., 10033 New York, NY
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Contact information: phone number
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001 646 592 4190
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Contact information: email
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archives@yu.edu
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Reference number
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Ms.
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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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Manuscripts
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Language of title
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eng
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Creator / accumulator
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Yeshiva University
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Language(s)
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heb
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spa
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Extent
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over 1,000 manuscripts
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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This collection comprises over one thousand rabbinic and historical manuscripts, including Bibles, Liturgy, works on Jewish Law, Homiletics, Ethics, Philosophy, Mysticism, commentaries on the Bible and Talmud, and rabbinic correspondence. One of its highlights is the illuminated Prague Bible of 1488, written by the scribe Mattathias ben Jonah of Laun, Bohemia.
This collection includes some manuscripts from Sephardic authors, such as the following:
Ms. 1369: Abraham Zacuto's Sefer Yuḥasin, a book of genealogies intended to outline the historical development of the Oral Law and to establish the chronology of the sages who had transmitted it, originally written in Tunis. This manuscript is partly written in Oriental cursive script and partly in later (17th century) Sephardic cursive script.
Ms. 1251: Teʻudot she-heʻetiḳ (vol. 1) and Ohel Ya'akov (vol. 2) by Jacob Sasportas (c. 1610-1698). The latter is the only manuscript copy of Sasportas' Ohel Ya'akov known so far. According to Dwerk (2019), this manuscript shows evidence of having been used as the copy text of its printed version in Amsterdam in 1737. The volume also includes letters from Rabi Raphael Suffino and Rabi Joshua de Silveyra to Sasportas.
Ms. 1374 Vol. 3: manuscript of Dizertasiones: sobre el Mesias by Abraham Gómez Silveira (1656-1741), written in Amsterdam about 1700 in response to Isaac Jacquelot's Dissertation published in 1699 (MS 1374, vol. 3). The manuscript is divided into six volumes, and it is decorated with arabesque ornaments and floral and animal motifs.
Digital copies of both manuscripts are available online.
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Kitve R. Yaʻaḳov Śaśporṭaś
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Dizertasiones: sobre el Mesias. Vol. 1
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Archival history
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The manuscript collection of the Yeshiva University Libraries was constituted over the years by donations, loans, and acquisitions from several provenances. A significant part of the manuscripts belonged to the library of Louis Lewin (1868-1941), a rabbi who served in various communities in Posen and Silesia, and a prolific author who wrote extensively about the Jewish communities in those areas.
The above-mentioned manuscripts do not belong to the Yeshiva University Libraries. Zacuto and Gómez Silveira's manuscripts are part of the collection of Richard and Debra Parkoff and are on loan to Yeshiva University, and the Sasportas manuscript is owned by the Judaica Conservancy Foundation.
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Administrative / Biographical history
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Yeshiva University is the oldest educational institution under Jewish auspices in America. Its origins are in the Etz Chaim Yeshiva, an elementary school for Eastern European immigrants founded in 1886 and located at 44 East Broadway, Mariampol Synagogue, on New York's Lower East Side. The rabbinical seminary was chartered by the New York State Board of Regents in 1897. In September 1916, Yeshiva University High School for Boys/Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy opened at 9-11 Montgomery Street. Twelve years later, in 1928, it was established in Yeshiva College, which moved to 2540 Amsterdam Avenue in the following year.
The Mendel Gottesman Library opened in 1969 on the Main Campus in Washington Heights. At present, it hosts one of the world's great Judaic library collections, with over 300,000 physical volumes, including about 8,000 rare books and over 1,000 manuscripts.
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
