Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries

“Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries [is] a handsome volume of coffee-table size… . After the shuttering of physical libraries during the pandemic, and as library budgets continue to shrink, it is right and good to remember the debt of gratitude we owe the great libraries and librarians for preserving our historical treasures—not to mention all those who brought this fine book into being.” * Jewish Review of Books *“Today, one of the greatest collections of Jewish books in the world happens to reside in the Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford. Although the library’s two largest bequests of Hebrew books came from Jewish collectors, many of the most precious Hebrew manuscripts were donated or sold to the Bodleian by Christian collectors… . In the most fascinating feature of Jewish Treasures­—a feature never before attempted in a comparable volume about a collection of Jewish books—each of the work’s seven central chapters relates the story of one of the Bodleian’s Hebrew collections and, even more interestingly, the career of the collector behind it.” * Mosaic Magazine *“A gorgeous book… Organized by chapters telling the stories of their Jewish and more often Christian collectors, it discusses, and shows in many beautiful plates, the greatest Jewish items in the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges’ libraries. The editors, Rebecca Abrams and Cesar Merchan-Hamann, combine Western history,Jewish history, art history, and Oxford history in this beautiful and fascinating book.” – Elliott Abrams * Mosaic Magazine *

Rebecca Abrams is an award-winning author and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford. Cesar Merchn-Hamann is Hebrew and Judaica Curator in the Bodleian Library and Director of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library at the University of Oxford.