Special Collections

The special collections are rich in primary sources for research in Bible, rabbinics, Jewish philosophy, liturgy, history, and medieval Hebrew literature.

The collection is particularly comprehensive in rabbinics, the Talmud, and its cognate literature. Included in this division are several thousand volumes of codes, responsa, and commentaries that contain considerable historical information about the Middle Ages.

The special collections are made up of the following: 

Special Collections Hours:

The Special Collections is open by appointment only. Appointments can be made by phone at (212) 678-8077 or by email at srr@jtsa.edu. Appointments will be scheduled during the following hours:

  • Monday through Thursday: 12:00 to 4:00 p.m.
  • Friday: 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Archives and Jewish Art collections are accessible by appointment only.

  • For Archives, please phone (212) 280-6011
  • For Jewish Art, please phone (212) 678-8975

The Library is closed on all Jewish holidays and on the following national holidays:

  • New Year's Day
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Day
  • Presidents' Day
  • Memorial Day
  • the Fourth of July 
  • Labor Day
  • Thanksgiving Day

Library Conservation Department

The Conservation Department was founded in 1989 to support The Library's mission of preservation. Responsibilities include the protection, stabilization, and repair of rare materials for in-house exhibitions as well as loans to other institutions. The Library was awarded a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2001. The Conservation Lab was expanded, additional equipment was purchased, and two conservators were hired for a three-year period.

In 2002, The Dr. Bernard Heller Foundation awarded a grant to The Library for the full conservation of one of its most treasured manuscripts, The Prato Haggadah. Click here to learn more about the conservation effort. 

The current staff of the Conservation Department includes one part-time conservator, one part-time conservation consultant, and one part-time conservation technician. To read more about one of the conservators working in the lab, click here.

Manuscripts

The Library's collection of Hebrew manuscripts is one of the largest collections in the world. There are more than 11,000 codices as well as thirty thousand genizah fragments.

The manuscripts are divided into the following subject areas:

Bible

Eleven hundred biblical manuscripts from many countries, including China, Persia, Yemen, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany.

Benaim Collection of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic Manuscripts
Cairo Genizah

The thirty thousand fragments housed in The Library contain invaluable information pertaining to the social, cultural, religious, and economic life of Mediterranean Jewry from the ninth through the nineteenth centuries.

History

Over four hundred pinkassim (record books) from Jewish communities and organizations throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

History of Science and Medicine

Two hundred and fifty manuscripts dealing with the topics of medicine, math, astronomy, and astrology.

Kabbalah and Mysticism

Seven hundred manuscripts of both "practical" and "theoretical" Kabbalah. The Library's Kabbalah collection is considered the most important in the world.

Liturgy

Seven hundred and fifty manuscripts reflecting the liturgies of many communities, including rites of Algiers, Aleppo, Ancona, Avignon, Barbados, Bukhara, Carpentras, Cochin, Constantinople, Corfu, Cunio, Lisle, Padua, Persia, Rovigo, and Yemen. This collection is one of the richest in the world.

Philology

Four hundred manuscripts encompassing a wide range of topics within the field of Hebrew philology.

Philosophy

Over 225 manuscripts including works by the great medieval Jewish philosophers such as Ibn Ezra, Bahya, Halevi, Abraham Ibn David, Maimonides, Crescas, and Albo.

Poetry and Belles Lettres

Three hundred seventy manuscripts including works of the great medieval Spanish, Italian, and Ashkenazic Jewish poets and dramatists.

Polemics

A rich collection of seventy-two polemical manuscripts including records of disputations and general theological treatises.

Rabbinics

The largest collection of its kind in the world. It consists of over two thousand five hundred manuscripts.

Rare Printed Books

The scope of The Library's collection of twenty thousand early printed books includes practically the entire output of various Hebrew presses in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; deluxe books printed on parchment; unica, books of which no other copies are recorded in the world's major libraries; first editions of the majority of Hebrew books printed prior to the nineteenth century; first printings from Hebrew presses throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the largest collection of deluxe books printed on parchment.

The Library houses the largest collection in the world of Hebrew incunabula, books printed before 1501. Other important collections include:

  • Early printed bibles from the fifteenth through eighteenth century
  • Early printed editions of the Talmud
  • Over two thousand five hundred Haggadot, the richest collection in the Western Hemisphere
  • The Israel Solomons Collection of Anglo-Judaica
  • The Ladino Collection
  • Judaica resources in Latin, Greek, German, English, Spanish, and French
  • Books printed in Yiddish
  • Abraham and Deborah Karp Collection of Early American Judaica

Archives

The Archives of The Jewish Theological Seminary were established in 1976 with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The archival collections of The Jewish Theological Seminary consist of several major subject areas: the history and development of the Conservative Movement in America, records of Jewish communities and families in Europe and North Africa, the emergence and development of modern Jewish scholarship in Germany and its transfer to the United States, the development of Yiddish literature in America, and the papers of Jewish communal leaders.

Highlights of our collection include archives of seminal figures associated with JTS or the Conservative Movement, such as Solomon Schechter, Louis Ginzberg, and Cyrus Adler. They also include records of European and North African Jewish communities. The French Jewish communities archive and associated collections, with original documents dating from 1648, are the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The NEH grant enabled The Library to survey its collections and produce a preliminary inventory of holdings. In 1988, the New York Historical Documents Survey culminated in the creation of 117 archival collection records which can be retrieved via The Library's online catalog or through the Research Libraries Group (RLG) database.

A guide to the archival collections, an inventory to the French Jewish Communities Record Group, and historical documents from German communities and other European countries are available in the special reading room.

The Joseph and Miriam Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism consists of the institutional records of The Jewish Theological Seminary (1902–1972), records of Conservative synagogues, papers of Conservative rabbis from the early nineteenth century to the present, oral histories, and over six thousand photographs.

Music Archives

The Music Archives of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary consist of the special music collections of various cantors, composers, musicologists, teachers, and collectors of Jewish music.

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Broadsides

The Library's broadside collection comprises approximately four thousand rare and significant pieces spanning five centuries (the sixteenth to the twentieth) from many communities in Europe, Israel, and America. Broadsides are defined as sheets printed on one side. They may be posters, handbills, or signs; they may serve as announcements, learning aids, business forms, or letters. They were, more often than not, cheaply produced and intended to be ephemeral. Broadsides are primary sources for history, religious studies, ethnography, art history, and literature. The collection contains a number of different documents: poems and prayers, Kabbalistic writings, genealogical charts, micrographs, maps, and legal documents.

Jewish Art

The Library houses one of the finest collections of Jewish art in the world. Among the types of material found in The Library are:

Prints and photographs

Approximately six thousand items from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries on the subjects of people, synagogues, festivals and holidays, customs and ceremonies, Bible, topography, costume, caricature, and anti-Semitica.

Ketubbot

Five hundred marriage contracts, many decorated, from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. These ketubbot originate from Europe, North Africa, the Near East, India, Iran, and the United States.

Scrolls

Four hundred and thirty scrolls, including Torah and haftarah scrolls, Kabbalistic scrolls, and three hundred Esther scrolls, many of them decorated.

Bookplates

Three thousand ex libris with examples from both private individuals and Jewish institutions worldwide.

Four thousand items from the early twentieth century to the present.

Please note that cataloging information is not available online for the following Jewish Art collections; email for information:

  • Topography
  • Synagogues
  • Costume
  • Customs and Ceremonies
  • Festivals and Holidays
  • Caricature and Anti-Semitica

Library Exhibitions

The exhibitions program enables the general public to become better acquainted with the vast treasures of Jewish heritage collected by The Library. Exhibitions are mounted three times a year, showcasing the collections of manuscripts, incunabula, rare printed Hebrew books, genizah fragments, broadsides, ketubbot, megillot, and prints.

Exhibitions are on view in the Goldsmith Gallery and on the first and fifth floors of The Library building. All exhibits are free and open to the public.

Past Exhibitions