Hebrew Manuscripts
The collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the University Library includes outstanding witnesses to Jewish book culture from medieval and early modern Europe. It consists of 68 complete book manuscripts, two scrolls, and a series of fragments that testify to lost and cut-up manuscripts.
The University Library’s Hebrew manuscript collection enjoys international recognition due to numerous important individual items. Among the highlights is the two-volume large-format “Machsor Lipsiae” (Vollers 1102), a collection of prayers for the special holidays of the Jewish year, intended for use by the Jewish community of Worms. With its elegant miniatures from an Upper Rhine book painter’s workshop from the early 14th century it is among the most beautiful machzorim. Also notable are the extensive commentary on the Pentateuch by the great Jewish scholar Rashi († 1105 in Troyes) in a copy that is singularly close to the author (B. H. 1) or the so-called “Leipzig Bible gloss,” a parchment codex from the 13th century with a unique Old French-Middle High German-Hebrew glossary on the Old Testament (Vollers 1099).
About two-thirds of the total collection come from the deposit of the Leipzig Municipal Library, which the University Library has been preserving since 1962. This is largely due to the manuscript collection of the renowned universal scholar and Orientalist Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1663-1705) from Altdorf, which the Leipzig City Council acquired at the beginning of the 18th century and which includes, besides important medieval codices, the original correspondence of Wagenseil with Jewish and Christian Hebraists, a highly significant source of scientific history (B. H. 18). Wagenseil was an early advocate of a tolerant attitude towards Judaism.
The University Library’s Hebrew manuscript collection was digitized in its entirety between 2015 and 2018 as part of the “Digitization of German-Jewish Cultural Heritage” project, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BMK). All digitizations are available online via the “Ktiv: The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts” website of the National Library of Israel.