*Shalom,* *Please respond to Mr. Townsend directly to his email: **[email protected] I am not sure if he would be willing to give a portion of the collection to one institution and some other titles to another. The important thing is that we don't leave behind any books that should be placed in a geniza if they are not acquired. Mr. Towsend is aware of the need to place items in a geniza, but he is not qualified to decide which ones.*
My dad, John T. Townsend, was an ordained Episcopalian minister who became an expert in ancient biblical languages and translations from different points in time (where, for example, there were subtle differences in grammar that helped date the original scrolls). We joked that he was a closet Jew. He bragged that 11 of his doctoral students converted to Judiasiam after taking his courses. (I was told this story by the rector of his church who didn't think that was something to brag about.) We lived in Israel for a year when I was 6 years old (I can still beg for ice cream in hebrew) in 1967 (just before the war). My dad sharpened his knowledge of Hebrew there. Later in his career, he was also interested in supporting better Jewish-Christian relations. So, while most of his books relate to his research in Judaism, some may be on Jewish-Christian relations. I went over to his house today to take some photographs to give you a rough gage of the condition of the books as well as to measure the linear shelf length of the entire collection since my ~10,000 number was a back-of-envelope guess. It turns out that there are 453 feet of books. I took some photos and uploaded them to my company website, which you can retrieve as a zip file at https://web.barrett.com/temp/Townsend_Library.zip *Jackie Ben-Efraim* *AJL Advertising Manager* *[email protected] <[email protected]>* *818-383-9672*
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