From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress

New York & Washington: Rizzoli & The Library of Congress, 1991. Hardcover. VG Very Good/VG Very Good. Demy folio, [30cm/12inches], full gilt-embossed ebony cloth with mylar-protected dust jacket, pp. 376, indexed. Illustrated with b-w halftones, colour plates &ct. Please feel free to ask for particulars and/or additional photographs. ... Housed among the 2,000 rarities in the special collections of the section are cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, incunables, decorated Jewish marriage documents, micrographies, miniature books, amulets, and the section's most noteworthy treasure: The Washington Haggadah, a 15th-century illuminated Hebrew manuscript copied by Joel ben Simeon. The more than two-hundred Hebrew manuscripts held in the section include a translation of the Koran into Hebrew, various responsa of the rabbis, an 18th-century decorated Scroll of Esther, and an early Ethiopian Psalter in Ge'ez. The section's treasures include examples from among the first books printed in Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, and the African continent. With 24 Hebrew incunables housed in the section, and an additional 15 in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, the Library of Congress ranks as one of the world's most important public collections of Hebrew incunables--books printed before 1501. Also unique to its collections are more than 1,000 original Yiddish plays, in manuscript or typescript form, written between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th-centuries, that were submitted for copyright registration to the Library of Congress and intended for production on the Yiddish stage. Dispersed throughout the Library of Congress' special collections are such Judaic treasures as letters from Presidents Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Lincoln (among others) to prominent American Jewish leaders of their times; music composed by Leonard Bernstein, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, and Arnold Schoenberg; and papers and manuscripts of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.