Personal Statement
The collections-development policy of the NLI calls on us to make the Judaica collection as complete an aggregate of Judaica printed and textual material as imaginable. We will never reach that ever-receding horizon, but I firmly believe that we must gather and preserve everything ever published in the Jewish field, from ancient learned rabbinic manuscripts to chapbooks of popular humor. The collection must be as diverse and representative as possible – covering every period of history, every ideological, religious, or secular group or subgroup. Today, we must pay particular attention to the vast amounts of digital-born material, without which we cannot understand contemporary Jewry. Anything that Jews over the course of history have done together and which they view as Jewish deserves documentation and preservation, so that laypeople and scholars now and in the future can access as much of the past as possible.
In recent years, a number of projects have kept me occupied:
The Pinkasim Collection
The National Library of Israel is aggregating digital copies of early modern European Jewish communal record books, collectively referred to as Pinkasim. These documents can be as difficult to decipher as to use in research. But for scholars who dare to take the plunge, they unearth new ways to understand Jewish communal, social, and political life.
Read more about the Pinkasim collection
Maimonides in Manuscript, Print, and the Digital Age
The National Library cooperated with the Israel Museum in 2018? to create a joint exhibit on Maimonides in manuscript, print, and the digital age.
Visit the website
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