Month: February 2019
-
An Illustrated Manuscript for Terefot: CAJS Rar Ms 480
I cataloged a manuscript which contained three parts, each relating to another. It covers the practical aspects of ritual law, roughly based on the order and topics of Shulḥan ‘arukh Yoreh de’ah, or the code of Jewish law’s section for ritual and dietary law. A word about the provenance: the manuscript is without a mention…
-
CAJS Rar Ms 481: A Kabbalistic and Polemical Manuscript Fragment from 1605 Egypt, with Provenance
CAJS Rar Ms 481, Ḳunṭres Imre emet with Ṿikuaḥ ‘al ha-R.M. di Lonzano, was recently acquired at auction, thanks to the support of the Elis and Ruth Douer Endowed Fund for Judaica Collections. I cataloged a manuscript fragment (or, what originally appeared to be a fragment) of a polemical nature, dated to the first decade…
-
Down on the Weisberger Farm
Where do booksellers go when they retire from the trade? Lawyers become consultants (ditto for doctors) and the academy has been known to accept tradespeople from all walks of life on an adjunct basis. But bookselling is not a popular college course, and the range of industries looking for freelance advice from hardened paper-traders is,…
-
“You’re so vain, you probably think the Song of Songs is about you!”: An Illustrated 16th-Century Bible
Adam and Eve are having a bad day: they disobeyed God, got caught, and are being run out of Eden by an angel with a flaming sword. Undoubtedly they’re in no mood to appreciate the invention of death metal, pace the skeletal guitarist shredding the soundtrack to their misery. Judging by his grin, though, he…
-
“If a Woman Had Been Mayor”
[Ed. Note: Today’s post is by Prof. Zachary M. Schrag from George Mason University. We are very grateful to Prof. Schrag for visiting the Penn Libraries for his research and volunteering to write about what he found.] From May 6 through 8, 1844, Protestant nativists battled Irish Catholic immigrants in the streets of Kensington—then an…