In honor of the eight nights of Hanukkah, the National Library of Israel has produced eight clips featuring rare items from the library's collections and presented in eight different languages, all with English subtitles.
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A number of the items appear publicly for the first time in the clips, each of which is about two to three minutes long and presented in Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hebrew, German, French, Russian, and English. The National Library will post a new clip to its Facebook and Twitter pages on each day of the Festival of Lights.
Treasures showcased in the clips include a rare printing of a Medieval French text that includes what is believed to be the oldest written mention of latkes (fried potato pancakes traditionally eaten during Hanukkah), a special Hanukkah booklet prepared for Jewish German soldiers during World War I, a stunning late 18th-century "Book of Antiochus" manuscript from the Bukharian Jewish community, a rare booklet of Ladino Hanukkah verses printed around 1828 in the Ottoman Empire, a traditional holiday recipe printed in Polish and Yiddish in Warsaw just before the Holocaust, and late 19th-century Hanukkah flyers from Italy and India.
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Some highlights of the National Library collection include Maimonides's commentary on the Mishna in his own handwriting, some of the earliest Talmudic manuscripts and fragments, the world's largest collections of ketubahs [Jewish marriage contract] and Haggadahs [used in the Passover Seder], Hebrew books dating to the advent of the printing press, archival collections of leading rabbinic figures, and the Gershom Scholem Library—the world's foremost resource for the study of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and Chassidism.
The clips were produced as part of the library's "A Look at the Jewish Year" series, which provides insights into the Jewish calendar and holidays through the lens of the National Library of Israel's world-leading collection of Jewish manuscripts, books, printed materials, and more.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
