Sotheby's scrolls

Sotheby's have an auction coming up of Judaica. It includes several manuscripts. At least one is from the Montefiore collection. But one of the major items that they are touting is a medieval Spanish tittled Torah scroll. The catalogue claims that it was written in the circle of R Shem Tov ibn Gaon. The entry is quite long and interesting.

There are also several Esther scrolls. The most important one is from 1564, and is apparently the earliest decorated Megillah. It was written by a woman named Estellina bat Menahem. Yup, a female scribe.

And two megillot illustrated by Shalom Italia.

Cool stuff. Catalogue is here.

Vatican catalogue

They really did it! The complete catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican collections is now available for download, here.

Erfurt

Readers of this blog should by now be familiar with the Erfurt manuscript of the Tosefta (digitized in full here, and transcribed here). You may also have heard about the 'Erfurt Treasure', which was on exhibit in several museums over the past few years. You may not have known, as I didn't, that Erfurt also boasts an old synagogue, possibly one of the oldest in Europe.

The Erfurt Treasure is now going on permanent display in the newly restored synagogue, and to celebrate, the city is holding a three day conference. The programme is here. Most of it is in German and of mostly local interest. But Prof Jordan Penkower will be there, speaking about 'The Ashkenazi Pentateuch Tradition as Reflected in the Erfurt Hebrew Bible Manuscripts - Text, Section Divisons, Layout of the Songs'. Prof Penkower has been doing work on medieval Ashkenazic Pentateuchs and Torah scrolls (some of which belong to the Erfurt collection, usually in Berlin but at least some will be on display in the synagogue), and he has discovered some fascinating things. If you're in the area, go and hear him (and Avraham David, who will be speaking in Erfurt in December). If not, you'll have to wait until he publishes his research. At the rate that he publishes, I don't expect that to be very long.

Southern France at Bialik

Mosad Bialik has just published two books on the Jewish communities of Southern France. One is the pinkas of the Jewish community in Carpentras, from the 18th century. It is one of the rich ironies of Jewish history that, after 1497, the only Jews living openly in Western Europe (west of Italy, that is) were the Jews living in the Papal States.

By that time, the Jewish communities of the area lacked the vitality and creativity they were known for in earlier times. But they did preserve their liturgical tradition, which contains many indigenous piyyutim. Those piyyutim are the subject of a major new study by Binyamin Bar-Tikvah, who previously published a monograph on the work of one of those medieval poets, Isaac ha-Seniri.

Book history

A cool event devoted to an important genre of literature - detective fiction!

Medieval Iberia

A workshop on new research into medieval Iberia is taking place at Hofstra University on November 6th. Some details here, though none I could find about the content. For a very brief explanation of some new research being done on Jews in 14th century Aragon who requested permission from the king to practice polygamy, see here.

Digital

The Leon Levy Foundation has put a lot of money into funding digitization and conservation of archives (including several archives that I catalogued). Like this Friday ketubah. And the Simonsen collection in Copenhagen is also online, which is very cool. The most famous manuscript there is, I think, this copy of Maimonides' responsa, though some people have other interests. Their interface is very user-friendly, and doesn't require downloading any special software, unlike another library I could mention.

Yemen, again

The latest volume of the venerable REJ is now available online. It includes an article by Dr M Morgenstern on the textual value of the Yemenite manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud. Morgenstern is working on a comprehensive grammar of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, based primarily on Oriental manuscripts (of the Talmud and the Geonic literature) and on magic bowls. His conclusion in this article is that from a linguistic perspective, the Yemenite manuscripts are contaminated by outside influences, and sometimes are simply mistaken.

Correction: Dr Morgenstern pointed out to me that he was discussing the Yemenite reading tradition, not necessarily the text of Yemenite manuscripts.