Dr. Stefan Litt

Dr. Stefan Litt studied general history and Jewish studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He graduated with an MA from the Freie Universität in 1995 and received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2008, Stefan underwent the habilitation process at the University of Graz in Austria, where he researched Dutch Jewry in the 18th century. He worked on several projects in a number of different archives prior to his appointment in 2010 to oversee the European language holdings in the Archives Department at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. Since 2018, Stefan has also served as curator of the Humanities Collection at the National Library of Israel.

Stefan has published several studies on central-European Jewry in the early modern period, including Juden in Thüringen in der Frühen Neuzeit (1520–1650) (Cologne/Weimar, 2003) and Pinkas, Kahal, and the Mediene: The Records of Dutch Ashkenazi Communities in the Eighteenth Century as Historical Sources (Boston / Leiden, 2009). He recently edited a selection of Stefan Zweig’s letters on Judaism titled Briefe zum Judentum (Berlin, 2020).

Curator's Statement

Our region in general, and the State of Israel in particular, is a meeting place of different cultures, religions and traditions. With the shrinking of geographical and cultural distances in the age of information, creating access points to diverse fields of knowledge is essential for both academic researchers and the public. The study of world cultures reveals how opinions and worldviews from all over the globe are constantly influencing each other, particularly in a society as diverse as Israel’s. Hundreds of thousands of books, journals, databases and special collections (archives, manuscripts, maps, etc.) in a variety of languages are available to users.

In my work with the collection, I make every effort to create a comfortable and modern work environment for the research community as well as the general public. Together with the Library staff, we ensure that information is constantly published and up to date on a wide range of topics. Moreover, thanks to new technologies, more and more digital items are becoming accessible and are now at the convenience of our research audience.