Special Projects

Finding aid to The New York Public Library's American Jewish Committee-sponsored oral history collection: over 156,000 pages of transcripts and 6,000 hours of taped interviews with 2,250 informants. This incomparable repository of unique and unpublished primary source material for the study of what is often called “the American Jewish experience in the 20th century” is one of American Jewish culture’s most substantial monuments.

Out of this comprehensive collection of interviews, 350 of the transcripts have been scanned and digitized; most of these are available both onsite at the Library and offsite, and the others onsite alone. Visit digitalcollections.nypl.org/american-jewish-committee to view them.

Over 100 illuminations selected from the 1,156 extant pages of the Padua Ashkenazi Mahzor, a medieval Jewish festival prayer book; Hamburg Haggadah (1731); Ketubbot (1638); and Xanten Bible.

Several thousand prints and photographs contained in works from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century. These include books illustrated with prints or photographs, photograph albums, and archival compilations; the processes represented range from engravings to lithographs, and from salt prints to heliogravures.

Placards from the two leading centers of Yiddish theater in their respective heydays: New York, 1890s–910s, and Buenos Aires, 1930s–1940s