Connect with us

RSS

Major Judaica collection amassed by Yemenite Jewish butcher donated to the National Library of Israel

(JTA) — The National Library of Israel has announced the acquisition of 60,000 Yemenite Jewish manuscripts and text fragments which made up one of the most significant private collections of Judaica in the world.  

The massive collection was donated by the descendants of Yehuda Levi Nahum, a butcher who died in 1998 after spending more than 50 years meticulously acquiring and studying the material. It includes Judeo-Yemenite translations of works by the medieval intellectual giant Maimonides, and writings by Yihya Saleh, a leading 18th-century rabbinic law scholar from Yemen, as well as ancient Jewish marriage contracts. 

“This important collection is a transformative addition to the library’s documentation of Yemenite-Jewish heritage that will enrich scholarship in this field for years to come,” Chaim Neria, the curator of the Judaica collection at the National Library, said in a statement. 

David Selis, a research fellow at Yeshiva University specializing in modern Jewish cultural history, compared the famous collections amassed by the bibliophile Elkan Nathan Adler and the Sassoon dynasty. 

“It’s the largest Hebrew manuscript collection assembled since the early 20th century, and the most comprehensive Yemenite manuscript collection ever assembled,” Selis told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

The news is also significant because of the contentious history shared by the National Library and the Yemenite Jewish community. Thousands of books, manuscripts, and cultural artifacts were stolen from the community during and after their voyage and absorption in Israel, in some cases by the government representatives entrusted with shepherding the community from Yemen. Many items ended up at the National Library, which refused in almost every case to return the books to their owners. 

“It would have been better that alongside efforts to preserve the manuscripts and and make them accessible, the library would also discuss and acknowledge the theft of Yemenite manuscripts during the community’s mass immigration to Israel, and clarify its role in the matter,” Rafi Shubeli, a Yemenite Jewish activist in Israel, wrote in a Facebook post. 

The collection was handed over last Thursday on a date coinciding on the Hebrew calendar with the anniversary of the death of Shalom Shabazi, the 17th-century Yemenite poet and rabbi. 

The unlikely story of this accumulation of Jewish literary riches begins a century ago in the town of Sanaa in Yemen when Nahum was an enterprising young teenager. 

Born to a family with limited means, he had saved up some money by selling candy and clothing. At age 14, he convinced his parents to allow him to leave the country and travel hundreds of miles to the Holy Land, according to a biography on the website of the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society, which helped digitize Nahum’s collection. 

It was 1929, long before the eventual mass emigration of Yemenite Jewry. 

Nahum traveled by donkey for two weeks from Sanaa to the port town of Aden, where he sold the donkey to pay for boat fare to get to Port Said, Egypt. From there he took a train to Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine and eventually settled in Tel Aviv. 

As a young man, he decided to dedicate his life to the preservation and Yemenite Jewish heritage. He sought to highlight the cultural vitality of his community in the face of condensing racial stereotypes that were prevalent among the Ashkenazi majority at the time. 

Earning a living as a butcher, he spent his free time collecting handwritten books. He started by writing to his parents in Yemen requesting items; they didn’t arrive until 1949 with Operation Magic Carpet, which brought the bulk of Yemenite Jewry to Israel. Later, he visited the immigrant camps and acquired books from the new arrivals. 

Realizing that many books were bound using the paper of older books, he took apart the covers and discovered ancient manuscript fragments, amassing 15,000 of the items in the collection in this way. 

Nahum kept the collection at his home in the town of Holon and hosted scholars and dignitaries. Israeli presidents Zalman Shazar and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (also a historian who sought to import important Jewish texts to the new state) among his visitors. He was a scholar as well as a collector and published nine books based on his research of the texts.  

Many of the most significant items in the collection have been cataloged and digitized over the years, but the National Library believes that many more gems in the collection are awaiting discovery by future scholars. 


The post Major Judaica collection amassed by Yemenite Jewish butcher donated to the National Library of Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

RSS

Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters

Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit challenging as unconstitutional the Trump administration’s actions to deport international students and scholars who protest or express support for Palestinian rights.

The lawsuit, filed on Saturday in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York, seeks a nationwide temporary restraining order to block enforcement of two executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in the first month of his term.

The lawsuit comes after the detention of a Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent US resident of Palestinian descent, whose arrest sparked protests this month.

Justice Department lawyers have argued that the US government is seeking Khalil’s removal because Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reasonable grounds to believe his activities or presence in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Rubio on Friday said the United States will likely revoke visas of more students in the coming days.

Trump vowed to deport activists who took part in protests on US college campuses against Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza following the October 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorists.

The ADC lawsuit was filed on behalf of two graduate students and a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who say their activism and support of the Palestinian people “has put them at serious risk of political persecution.”

“This lawsuit is a necessary step to preserve our most fundamental constitutional protections. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech and expression to all persons within the United States, without exception,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the ADC.

Chris Godshall-Bennett, the group’s legal director, said the litigation seeks immediate and long-term relief “to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”

The lawsuit centers on three Cornell University plaintiffs: a British-Gambian national and PhD student with a student visa; a US citizen PhD student working on plant science; and a US citizen novelist, poet, and professor in the Department of Literatures in English.

The post Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week

Israel’s Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar speaks at Reichman University in Herzliya on Sunday, September 11, 2022. Photo: Screenshot

i24 NewsPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, that he will bring a vote before his government to dismiss him next week.

The post Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes

Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

i24 NewsThe Houthis claimed on Sunday that they targeted the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and other vessels in the northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone. Military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that the US-led attacks against the Houthis on Saturday comprised of more than 47 airstrikes on seven governorates, with the death toll expected to rise.

“The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to target all American warships in the Red Sea and in the Arabian Sea in retaliation to the aggression against our country,” Saree said, vowing the Houthis “will continue to impose a naval blockade on the Israeli enemy and ban its ships in the declared zone of ​​operations until aid and basic needs are delivered to the Gaza Strip.”

The post Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News