Samuel Montagu and the Western Hebrew Library: online exhibition

By Mary Fisk|April 8, 2014|Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica|0 comments

From the exhibition: The first Mishneh-Torah printed in Amsterdam (1702) (http://www.ochjs.ac.uk/mullerlibrary/digital_library/WHL/MT1.html)

“The world of printed words: Samuel Montagu and the Western Hebrew Library” is a new online exhbition hosted by the Leopold Muller Memorial Library (Oxford Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies)

In the 1890s, Sir Samuel Montagu (1832-1911), the banker, founder of the Federation of Synagogues and Liberal MP for Whitechapel, gave his private library of early Hebrew printed books to the New West End Synagogue. Montagu’s books form the core of some 1300 items in the collection, dating from the 15th century and comprising both the Ashkenazi and  Sephardic traditions. The collection is currently on loan to Oxford’s Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies.

Selected highlights from the collection can be viewed in close-up via the textual magnifier

Click here to go to the online exhibition homepage