“As it is Written”: Judaic Treasures from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
Latest exhibition features items that span 1,000 years of Jewish history and culture TORONTO (January 27, 2015) – A unique 10th-century manuscript of an 8th-century compendium of Jewish law and a 2014 facsimile of a Scroll of Esther – these are the two chronological bookends of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library’s latest exhibition that spans a thousand years of Jewish manuscript and print culture. The exhibition, titled “As it is Written,” opened this week and features 112 items that highlight the library’s diverse Judaic collections “It’s quite remarkable that we are able to cover the span of a thousand years from our holdings,” says Barry Walfish, librarian and Judaica specialist at the Fisher Library and the exhibition’s curator. “It shows how rich the Fisher’s holdings are.” Drawing primarily on the Fisher’s Friedberg Collection, the exhibition features Biblical manuscripts, works of Jewish law and liturgy, incunabula and rare Constantinople imprints, among many other items. Highlights include the manuscript of the Zohar, which belonged to the famous false Messiah Shabbetai Tsevi, and a tribute album presented to Jewish statesman and philanthropist Moses Montefiore in 1884 on the occasion of his hundredth birthday. The exhibition also features contemporary works by Jewish and Israeli artists and book designers. A section devoted to Canadiana features one of the earliest Canadian imprints, dating from 1752, as well as the first English translation of the Hebrew prayerbook (1770), among whose sponsors were the Canadian merchant Aaron Hart and his wife. About a third of the items come from the Friedberg Collection, donated to the library by Toronto financier Albert Friedberg and his wife Nancy beginning in 1995. Walfish credits them with putting the library on the map as a major repository of rare Judaica. The exhibition opened on January 26 and runs until May 1, 2015. On February 11, David Stern, the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, will deliver a lecture, “The Lives of Jewish Books,” to celebrate the official opening of the exhibition. The lecture is sponsored by the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto and the University of Toronto Libraries. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library houses the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of the University of Toronto, including books, manuscripts and other materials, and is the largest rare book library in the country. For more information about the Fisher, please visit its website at: http://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/. The University of Toronto Libraries system is the largest academic library in Canada and is ranked third among peer institutions in North America, behind just Harvard and Yale. For more information, please contact: Barry Walfish, Judaic Specialist, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library 416-946-3176; barry.walf...@utoronto.ca<mailto:barry.walf...@utoronto.ca>
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