Paleography Workshop at Yale’s Beinecke Library Co-Sponsored by JTS to Examine Handwritten Notes in Books
A group of scholars and graduate students gathered at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University for a two-day paleography workshop in May devoted to deciphering handwritten inscriptions in centuries-old printed books. This workshop is part of a series of paleography workshops organized in conjunction with the digital humanities project Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place. It was led by Professor Edward Fram of Ben Gurion University of the Negev and organized by Konstanze Kunst (Joseph and Ceil Mazer Librarian for Judaic Studies at Yale) in conjunction with Footprints’ co-directors, Marjorie Lehman (JTS), Michelle Margolis, Adam Shear, and Joshua Teplitsky. The workshop will continue this summer with an online workshop led by Professor Noam Sienna, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. The goal of these workshops is to train more students and scholars in early modern paleography, or the skill of deciphering handwriting.
Footprints records the movement of individual copies of Jewish books across the globe so users can visualize the centuries-long history of the Jewish book. It reshapes the way scholars can research the transmission and reception of books by drawing on neglected fragmentary evidence found within individual book copies, including signatures, inscriptions, and bookplates. It enables the hidden stories of widows and wives, brides and grooms, sons and daughters, merchants and censors, refugees and immigrants, philanthropists and book collectors to come alive. The Yale collection, in particular, included inscriptions and handwritten notes from mohels and butchers.
Regarding the workshop, Professor Lehman commented, “After a difficult year for all of us, it was wonderful to connect with one another through our devotion to the history of Jewish books. Reading difficult inscriptions while drawing on the expertise of the participants was so enriching and generative.”
Footprints, which has over 20,000 entries, is co-directed by Lehman of JTS, Michelle Margolis of Columbia University, Adam Shear of the University of Pittsburgh, and Joshua Teplitsky of the University of Pennsylvania. They work in partnership with the digital humanities experts at the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning. JTS also congratulates Footprints on receiving the Digital Innovation Award (2023) from the Renaissance Society of America.
This paleography workshop at Yale University Library was also sponsored by:
- JTS
- CUNY Graduate Center, Center for Jewish Studies
- Fordham University, Center for Jewish Studies
- Northwestern University, Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies
- Princeton University, Program in Judaic Studies
- Rutgers University, Department of Jewish Studies
- University of Pennsylvania, Jewish Studies Program
- University of Pittsburgh, Jewish Studies Program
- Washington University, Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies
- Yale Program in Jewish Studies
- Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
