The National Library

The Reader's Association of the National Library now has a website - here.

Hebrewbooks

The indefatigable Hebrewbooks.org has uploaded a new batch of books, including some important tools for Talmudists. Baer Ratner's Ahavat Zion vi-Yerushalayim is a collation of textual variants on the Jerusalem Talmud from citations in medieval commentaries. And Michael Higger's Otsar ha-Baraitot catalogues all the baraitot in the Talmudic corpus, trying to track down their parallels and sources. And the first edition of Halakhot Pesukot, published from the Sassoon manuscript by Saliman Sassoon. Not to be confused with its Hebrew translation, known as Hilkhot Re'u, or with the collection of Geonic responsa published as Halakhot Pesukot min ha-Geonim.

Conference on Italian Jewry

First conference of the Associazione Israeliana per lo Studio della Storia degli Ebrei in Italia. Wednesday, 25th February 2009 at Tel Aviv University. Details here.

Hebrew manuscript collection for sale

The Valmadonna Trust is being sold. If you're in New York, go see it on display - details here. I've heard it's breathtaking. The collection includes the manuscript about which this book was written.

Update: NYTimes article here. They pick up on, without emphasizing, one of the special characteristics of the printed book collection - Lunzer's special interest in Hebrew printing in India:

Each shelf is labeled, not with a subject, but with a city or town of origin: Amsterdam, Paris, Leiden, Izmir, Bombay, Cochin, Cremona, Jerusalem, Ferrara, Calcutta, Mantua, Shanghai, Alexandria, Baghdad and on and on.

Quntres

Quntres, a bibliographic journal published online by the JTS libraries, has finally published its inaugural volume.

I might note that, besides this digital journal about (mostly) printed books, we now have a print journal about digital books - according to the latest issue of Alei Sefer.

Rosenthal Prize

News from HUJI-Talmud:
The Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal prize will be awarded this year to Prof. Menahem (Marc) Hirshman. The prize will be awarded next Monday, 9 February, at Beit Maeirsdorf on the Mt Scopus campus. Hirshman will speak about R Yehoshua and Avnimus.

For some of Hirshman's earlier work on interactions between Tannaim and non-Jewish scholars, see here.