Digital Collections

Digital Collections

The Library has undertaken numerous efforts to digitize unique and rare materials and collections, to enhance access, and to preserve our collection by limited handing of the original documents. This website enables the users to search The Library's digital collections. The scope of what you can search for within these collections will expand over time.  

With the generous support of the Rebell Family Foundation and the members of The Library, The Library has recently licensed and installed a digital-assets management system. DigiTool manages, organizes, and provides a web interface for searching our digital collections.

About the Collections

Rare Wedding Poems
The wedding poems, or epithalamia, in The Jewish Theological Seminary's collection date from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. They are written in Italian, German, or Hebrew in verses praising the bride and bridegroom and praying for their prosperity. Designed primarily as celebratory poems praising the newlyweds and their families, Jewish epithalamia are characterized by a common structure. An introduction consisting of honorific statements introduces the names of the groom and his father. Frequently, the bride and her lineage are also noted. In the central section the author presents the poem itself employing any one of a variety of literary formats. The third section usually consists of the author's final salutations and a signature, using either the poet's full name or initials. While many of the poems are printed, the few handwritten examples that remain attest to the personal nature of such verses.

Digitization of the rare wedding poem collection was funded by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).

Bookplate Collection
The bookplates, or ex libris, primarily from the collection of Leah Mishkin, former head librarian of the Saul Silber Memorial library in Boston, were collected for more than fifty years. The term ex libris (Latin for "from the books [of]") became a common term for bookplates after the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Over the years they have become collectors' items, small works of art that can reveal personal and cultural information.

Most of the early bookplates were armorial in design (displaying family coats of arms) and were used by the aristocracy. The oldest bookplates with a Jewish connection were those of Christian Hebraists. A bookplate from the Mishkin Collection, for example, features Johann Christian Wagenseil (1633–1705) with a quotation in Hebrew from Psalms 16:6.

The collection features bookplates of early rabbis, physicians, authors, and famous personalities such as Albert Einstein, Chaim Weizmann, David deSola Pool, and Yehuda Leib Maimon. Many bookplates were designed by world-famous artists, either as commissions or for their own use. Among these artists are E. M. Lilien, Herman Struck, Joseph Budko, and Solomon Levadi. E. M. Lilien, known as the "father of Jewish bookplates," was the first to create ex libris with distinctive Jewish motifs. His strong curvilinear forms and compositions were characteristic of art nouveau style. In the bookplate that he designed for Anselm Hartog, he depicts Eve being tempted by the serpent and adds a comic touch by substituting a book for the forbidden fruit. 

Digitization of the bookplate collection was funded by the Gilles family.

Judaica Americana
Judaica Americana is a unique collection of one hundred pamphlets published in the United States between 1725 and 1900. The pamphlets include sermons given by rabbis at various occasions, lectures on Jewish–Christian relations, educational pamphlets, historical articles, and biographies of renowned Jews of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are also political and civic documents relating to the Jews and the government of the United States. Judaica Americana is a primary source for the study of American Jewish life before the mass migrations of the early twentieth century.

Digitization of Judaica Americana was funded by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

News About Jews
News About Jews contains digital images and catalog records of 259 American newspapers from the Abraham and Deborah Karp Collection of Early American Judaica. These newspapers span the years 1782–1898. They document popular images of Jews in the United States and reflect the daily experiences of Jews around the world in the banner headlines of their times. They contain literary musings, humorous anecdotes, and a host of details that illuminate our understanding of Jewish life from the early days of the American Republic through the times of mass migration at the end of the nineteenth century.

Ketubbot Collection
Gateway to the JTS Library Ketubbot Collection and the Zucker (RCZ) Family Collection

Rare Prints
Gateway to our Biblical print collection and portraiture print collection

Library Exhibits
Virtual exhibitions curated by The Library's Jewish Art Department

Cooperative Projects