In addition to the collection of Judaica books in the library, we have been collecting manuscripts of various kinds that are of interest to scholars.  These different genres of materials enhance the Judaica Collection by providing library patrons with materials that are unique to Yale.  Since the library’s holdings are cataloged online, knowledge of these items is accessible to scholars all over the world.

The largest of our manuscript collections are the Jewish community registers from Europe.  These registers, known in Hebrew as pinkase kehilah, were produced by synagogue congregations, study societies, charitable societies and burial societies (the hevra kadisha).  The pinkasim (pl.) in Yale’s collection originate primarily in Eastern and Central Europe (mostly Hungary and Romania).  The contents consist of proceedings of meetings, regulations and by-laws, records of monetary contributions, and the recording of births and deaths.  The title page of many of them are elaborately written and decorated.  They are an excellent primary resource for the study of the economic, social and religious life of Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  They originated in the large centers of Jewish life but also in small out-of-way communities.  They thus shed light on Jewish life in geographic locations where there is precious little other information available.  There are pinkasim in the collection that contain records that go up to the early 1940s, the point at which these communities were destroyed by the Nazis.

The community register collection serves as a complement to Yale’s large collection of yizkor books, memorials to the destroyed Jewish communities of Europe during the Sho’ah.  These are works that were by-and-large compiled by survivors of those towns.  Those that remained alive at the end of the war attempted to evoke the towns of their birth in earlier times when those towns were still vibrant and active.  In addition to the many essays concerning the village, town, or city found in these books, the compilers also included photos of members of the various Zionist groups, sports clubs, school graduations, family outings, socialist or Bundist gatherings, and other events in the life of their community. The yizkor books celebrate the life of European Jewish communities that were brutally destroyed; the community register collection serve to shed further light on many of those communities.  A list of most of Yale’s holdings can be found at:  http://www.library.yale.edu/judaica/site/collection/yizkorbooks.php