Paleography Workshop at University of Toronto’s Fisher Library

Professor Marjorie Lehman, JTS Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, co-directs Footprints, a digital humanities project

July 15, 2025: In early June, a group of scholars and graduate students gathered at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto for a two-day paleography workshop devoted to deciphering handwritten inscriptions in centuries-old printed books. This workshop was part of the annual Fisher Summer Seminar Series, which offers hands-on training using the library’s rich collections. It also formed part of an ongoing paleography workshop series organized in collaboration with  Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place—a digital humanities project that traces the movement and ownership of individual Jewish books as they move around the globe. The series reflects the commitment of the Footprints co-directors, including JTS’s Professor Marjorie Lehman, to training a cohort of scholars in the wide range of paleographic traditions used by Jewish communities from Europe to North Africa.

The group received instruction on Ashkenazic and Sephardi/Mizrahi scripts. Professor Edward Fram of Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Dr. Noam Sienna, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto returned to share their rare expertise. As exemplars of outstanding pedagogy, Fram and Sienna equipped every participant with the tools to decipher even the most challenging scripts. Regarding the workshop, Marjorie Lehman commented, “I entered another world, just for a few days, where I could think about book owners like myself who personalized their books. How incredible it was to find a family’s genealogy inside a copy of Arba’ah ve’esrim (Venice, 1515-1518) reflecting 100 years of a family’s book ownership in a Bible printed by Daniel Bomberg that made its way to Mühringen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. Now anyone can turn to Footprints and locate this information. It would have remained hidden, if not for the work of Footprints.” Commenting on the same book Noam Sienna said, “ I could not sleep thinking about the Siegel family. It was a window into a story and I wanted to know more about them.” Chaya Juni, a recent graduate of the University of Toronto, embraced what she described as “the human elements that made her think about her own handwriting,” and noted how much she had learned in such a short time. Albert Yang, a graduate student at the same university, reflected on one of Footprints’ most valuable aspects: its reliance on scholarly collaboration.

Participants left the workshop eager to use their new skills on local collections in Montreal, Cleveland, New York, Washington DC, and Jerusalem. Feedback focused on the importance of collaboration to this work, as well as excitement about uncovering previously hidden histories. Footprints has already published a post citing some of the findings by one group following their training, and more will be posted in the coming weeks. 

The Footprints co-directors, Marjorie Lehman (The Jewish Theological Seminary), Michelle Margolis (Columbia University), Adam Shear (University of Pittsburgh), and Joshua Teplitsky (University of Pennsylvania) are indebted to Nadav Sharon, the Jewish Studies Librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library for his outstanding work in organizing this workshop along with David Fernandez, head of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Fisher Library, Jessica Lockhart, Research Associate and Head of Research, Old Books New Science Lab, and Stephanie J . Lahey, Andrews Fellow in Book Science, Old Books New Science Lab. We are thankful for the support of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library of the University of Toronto, the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, the Hidden Stories Project of the University of Toronto, and the University of Toronto Hillel. We thank our other supporters as well: CUNY Graduate Center, Center for Jewish Studies, Fordham University, Center for Jewish Studies, Northwestern University, Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, Jewish Theological Seminary, 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.

The group is also grateful to the great book collectors of the 20th century, Nancy and Albert D. Friedberg and Sarah and Rabbi Abraham Aron Price, who amassed incredible collections of Hebrew books and made them available for public use at the Fisher Rare Book Library. 

Footprints co-directors thank all of the participants–Nathan Diena, Elaine Gold, Rachel Greenblatt, Jacquelyn Clements, Chaya Juni, David Lavenda, Louis (Chaim) Meiselman, Natalie Oeltgen, Jane Rothstein, Hannah Srour-Zackon, Patrick J. Stevens, David A. Wacks,  Dalia Wolfson, Albert Yang, and Erez Zobary–for their passionate commitment to the Footprints project and for inputting their data into the database.