This 400-year-old Jewish library survived Hitler and the Inquisition

[Mosby]

A researcher working at the Ets Haim Jewish library in Amsterdam, May 17, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)



AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Livraria Ets Haim is the world’s oldest functioning Jewish library. As such, it is no stranger to the prospect of imminent destruction.

Founded in 1616 by Jews who fled Catholic persecution in Spain and Portugal, the three-room library is adjacent to Amsterdam’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue in the Dutch capital’s center.

The 30,000-volume collection mostly contains manuscripts written by people who fled the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula or their descendants. The oldest document is a copy of the Mishneh Torah, the code of Jewish religious law authored by Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, or Maimonides, that dates to 1282. Ets Haim’s volume is pristine but for the scars left behind by an Inquisition censor, a Jew who had converted to Christianity and singed away entire passages of the book.

Ets Haim as a whole faced a similar fate — or worse — in 1940, when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and had 75 percent of its Jews murdered. Yet the Nazis left the Portuguese Synagogue intact, and instead of burning the library’s collection, they shipped the books to Germany. The collection was discovered there, with light damage, after the war.


http://www.jta.org/2017/06/27/news-opinion/world/this-400-year-old-jewish-library-survived-hitler-and-the-inquisition

[pansypoo53219]

1. cool.

[lostinhere]

2. Very Very Cool

After the destruction of the Alexandria library and the city of Palmyra, it's nice to see someone is protecting our history.

[PatrickforO]

3. That is very good.

nice library