The National Library of Israel, David and Fela Shapell Family Digitization Project, is pleased to announce that a digitized version of the Library's "Rothschild Haggadah" is now available for public access.
The so-called "Rothschild Haggadah" or "Murphy Haggadah" has a fascinating history. Until 1939 it was in the possession of the Rothschild family, but during World War II it was looted by the Nazis and disappeared. After the war, the Haggadah was acquired by a distinguished Yale alumnus, Dr. Fred Towsley Murphy who bequeathed it to the Yale University Library in 1948. In 1980 it was identified as a Rothschild manuscript and returned to its former owners who donated it to the Jewish National and University Library (now the National Library of Israel). The manuscript was written in Northern Italy ca. 1450, copied and illuminated by (or in the workshop of) the famous scribe-illuminator Joel ben Simeon. The manuscript was missing three leaves, probably detached before it was acquired by the Rothschilds. Recently two of the missing illuminated leaves were offered for sale and were purchased for the Library through the generosity of two anonymous donors. This digitized version of the manuscript includes the two recently acquired leaves. The manuscript is presented in the DjVu format which provides high quality, magnifiable images compressed into relatively small files for easy downloading. In order to view DjVu images it is necessary to download and install (once) a special free viewer program. The Rothschild Haggadah can be accessed at: <http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/heb6130/index.html>http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/heb6130/index.html (Description in Hebrew) or <http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/heb6130/index_eng.html>http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/heb6130/index_eng.html (Description in English) Elhanan Adler Deputy Director for Information Technology National Library of Israel P.O.B. 39105, Jerusalem 91390, Israel Email: <mailto:elha...@libnet.ac.il>elha...@libnet.ac.il, <mailto:elhan...@savion.huji.ac.il>elhan...@savion.huji.ac.il Tel.: 972-2-6585005, FAX: 972-2-6511771, Home tel.: 972-2-6515977 Mobile tel.: 972-54-6829657 --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@osu.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
