Jewish Treasures from Oxford’s Archives, and Their Intrepid Collectors

How many great Jewish books have owed their survival to the generosity—and the acquisitiveness—of Gentiles? At first glance, the question may seem counterintuitive, if not impertinent. Even leaving aside the two infamous burnings of the Talmud (in 1242 and 1554), who can count the innumerable acts of wanton destruction of Jewish books by Gentiles through the centuries? And what of the multitudes of manuscripts appropriated or seized in the Middle Ages by European nobility and Church officials of all ranks and later secreted away in palaces, monasteries, and cathedrals, there to be mainly forgotten or rendered unreadable by insects, moisture, decay, and the acids of time?

And yet, history, even Jewish history, has its ironies. For one thing, at certain times and in certain places Gentile owners related to their assiduously collected Jewish books out of motives that may have been complicated but were also positive and protective. For another thing, by the 18th and 19th centuries the progressive nationalization of once great private institutions, accompanied by the increasing secularization of society, saw the transfer of many such private collections to newly established national and university libraries. In a flukish but fortunate end to an essentially tragic story, volumes that had managed to survive finally became accessible again to a reading public that also happened to include Jews.

Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries, a vivid, lavishly produced, and fascinating new book, testifies to this latter development and its abundant fruits.