Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

Yom Kippur starts at sunset on 1 October. Here is the initial -word, inhabited by dragons and hybrids, at the beginning of Kol Nidrei (All vows). #YomKippur BL Oriental 42; 'Dragon's Head Mahzor'; Germany; 14th century; Germany; f.44v

We have a date! This year's Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections will be on December 1. "Beyond the Text: Reading Jewish History Between the Words" with Prof. Edward Fram, Prof Elisheva Carlebach, and Dr. Eugene Matanky. Register here! 📚📜 columbiauniversity.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Lovely interview with my colleague @jeremiah-mercurio.bsky.social on Linguistics in Columbia Libraries; I see a shoutout to the #LCAAJ (an incredibly rich Yiddish linguistics project that began in the 1950s...)! blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/linguistics/...

Really excited to see this medieval Hebrew manuscript and talk at the Morgan Library: www.themorgan.org/programs/gal... 📜📚💕

some of my favorite former NEH employees have channeled their collective grant-making wisdom into an opportunity for funders. thrilled to see it! hire them. 💫

I mean, it really will be an exhibit for the ages: www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-n... 📚📜

The Portuguese Synagogue, Esnoga or ‘Snoge’ in Amsterdam is celebrating its 350th birthday this year!

I love this so much.

Cool #dhjewish event going on in Wrocław this November: Beyond Digital Awe. European Jewish Studies and the Challenge of Digital Humanities dhjewish.org/event/confer...

New exhibit up at the RBML explores books as media for art. It's very cool.

This is amazing and also made me sad. I miss the ODH and the people that made it amazing.

Working on Aaron of Lincoln's charters this evening gives me an excuse to revisit this delightful charter of Simon le Bret granting lands at Wrangle and Leake (Lincs.) to Aaron of Lincoln and Abraham son of Rabbi Josce. TNA DL 27/267

i created this thingy yesterday and now I cannot stop watching it. yoavg.github.io/eternal/

Also: this great inter-library loan (one of the world's treasures!) poster from my September visit to Macalester College

There is still joy in the beginning of the semester. Overheard a kid in the library on the phone "there are people here from all over the world!! Like from every country!"

What an undertaking: this memorial in Vienna lists the names of the 65,000 Viennese Jews killed in the Holocaust. The names of relatives of several of my colleagues are listed. #Holocaust #memorial #Vienna

This famous memorial in Judenplatz in Vienna represents a library with books of people’s lives that will never be read - all of those who died in the Holocaust. Around the memorial are the names of camps where Austrian Jews were murdered. #Holocaust #memorial #Vienna

Here I will present a close look at four case studies, of manuscripts in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, that show manuscripts as tools of the trade for practitioners as well as curious readers. Their tissue of marks of production and use can shed light on the social meaning of these practices 4/4

Information literacy 101

Found ANOTHER interleaved Hebrew Bible with wide margins for annotations (the facing page was blank, now filled with notes in the same hand as the margin). Going on the list for the LitHum Hebrew Bible session! 📜📚

Saw this binding on a shelf and thought, wait, a saint in a Jewish book? No, it was S(hmuel) T(e) - really de - Modena. B893.1 M46

🇮🇹 CALLING ITALIAN NATIVE (OR NEAR-NATIVE) SPEAKERS 🇮🇹 Are you fluent in Italian? Join me in transcribing & editing Morais’s Italian materials—or share with your Italian-speaking students, friends & colleagues. It’s easy & fun! 🎉

Under the guidance of Laura Newman Eckstein & Arthur Kiron, my work involves transcribing and editing AI-generated transcriptions of Morais’s Italian letters. These letters are preserved at Penn’s @katzcenterupenn.bsky.social and digitized here ⬇️ fromthepage.com/upenn/morais...

Sabato Morais (1823–1897) was an Italian-American rabbi of Portuguese descent from Livorno, Hazzan in London’s Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, Rabbi of Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia from 1850. Educator, philanthropist & co-founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary in NY

I’m delighted to share that I’ve joined the Sabato Morais Transcription Project @upenn.edu as part of my internship for the JTS/AJL Graduate Certificate in Hebraica & Judaica Librarianship. Shout out to Paula Breger, Marjorie Lehman, @mmargolis.bsky.social, Naomi Steinberger & Aaron Taub!

The Mandel Center's annual competition for fellowships for the 2026–2027 academic year will open on August 15, 2025. Applications must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. on November 15, 2025. Fellows receive a monthly stipend of $5,000

Spent some time foliating the Soncino-Casalmaggiore Mahazor in prep for a big conservation project today, and noticed lots of fun things (initial letters that look pinned together! 15th c. capslock! Transferred ink! The most gorgeous Matza ever!) @hgot.bsky.social

“To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance” August 17, 1790: Hebrew Congregation of Newport RI congratulates Washington on the occasion of his visit. "Washington’s response" was the "clearest articulation of his belief in religious freedom" www.loc.gov/item/tod... 1/3

New Thesis in a Box from the Newberry Library, this one an extremely rare Hebrew manuscript from the Probasco collection, one of the Newberry’s foundation collections. @newberrylibrary open.substack.com/pub/raymondc...

Obsessing a bit today over the beautiful shoe buckles made by Jewish silversmith Myer Myers. Early Americans definitely liked a bit of sparkle and bling with their shoes, favoring ornate and shiny fabrics, gold trim, and sparkly buckles worn on the latchets of shoes like the ones below.

Sometimes you just need to spend a couple of hours with a senior scholar nerding out over very unique mss and books in your collection. 🥰📜📚

My "Yeda’yah son of Asayahu" seal has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my seal.

Pssst... have you heard? Edwin Seroussi's essay in our current issue, "Gossip, Rumors, Rehabilitation: Israel Najara's Shaming Revisited," is free to read and download through September 5! Learn more on the blog. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

#JewishStudies jobs--dept websites are always behind. If you have information on who got these jobs please send me an email. I will only post confirmed and public info. If you were on or involved in the search and it was cancelled, you can also let me know. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Applications are now open for Michaelmas Term classes with our Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages! This term we will be offering courses for 12 different languages, so be sure to apply by noon on Sept. 12th, UK time! www.ochjs.ac.uk/osrjl-applic... #languagelearning #oxford

Can’t say that Apple TV’s adaptation of Foundation is very good. But all the faults are worth it if the show helps get folks to Stop. Asking. Us. About. Gloves.

TFW you need to show off what the collection can do and just happen to have a copy of a translation and commentary by Almosnino Moses of Georg von Peurbach's Theoricae Novae Planetarum, by Almosnino Moses produced in Greece in 1546 on a cart for exhibit review :) MS X893 Al6

Sometimes I measure how crazy things are by pretending we’re in a Star Wars movie that was released a few years ago and imagining how long the opening crawl would have to be to catch everybody up

Thinking about doing a post on liturgies for the high holidays; did a search for "ke-minhag" in the catalog, and found Rome, Poland, Asti, Carpentras, Sepharadim, Cataloniya, Amsterdam, APaM, Corfu, Correggio, Ioannina, Salonika, Correggio. Regions, cities, communities. That's just a few!

I was judging Jean Piaget for this and then I realized this is how the number of tabs I have open looks to my laptop

In this house, the only crypto we stan are cryptojews

Literally used "technology" when describing the printing press about ten times on a podcast last night :)

As always, the upcoming @sims-mss.bsky.social lecture looks amazing: www.library.upenn.edu/events/schoe... 📚📜 #rarebooks #bookhistory

This is an amazing piece. Ostensibly on why certain groups use loopholes, but really about thinking deeply about your values and their relationship with new technologies before adapting them wholesale.

Oooo, Guadalajara Haggadah (and the mysterious copies with matching wormholes in the 90s...) could be the incunable example ;)

Dear colleagues, experts, and everyone: What's the best single volume history of the Holocaust to assign as supplementary reading for an undergraduate course? Thanks, Sam

Every once in a while (ok, all the time) I see something shared by a lot of people with a context that has nothing to do with the piece and I remember old Twitter's "do you want to read the article before you repost?" I know reading takes time, but also it helps.