Examples of Inscriptions, Censorship, Provenance, and Reconstruction
By: Chaim Meiselman

In this forum I hope to share some of the items and history I’ve uncovered at the Meyerhoff Collection at Towson University.

Along with my work of cataloging and describing the items in this collection, I have been collecting data about each books to add to Footprints. Below, I will share a selection of the items from this collection that I’ve shared with the Footprints project.

The Joseph Meyerhoff Collection is the product of the decades-long building of a rare Hebraica library: first at an institution known throughout the years as the Baltimore Teachers College, Baltimore Hebrew College, and Baltimore Hebrew University, and as of 2009, in its current location at the Towson University-Meyerhoff Collection.

1. In April of 2018, I added a volume of Tseror ha-Mor by Abraham b. Jacob Saba, printed at Venice in February 1567 [1] by Giorgio de Cavalli. This is the third printing of this literary work.

There is much evidence on this volume. Its footprints describe almost the entire life of this copy of the Tseror ha-Mor until its assumption into the Meyerhoff Collection.

The book includes the inscription of three generations of Parnasim and publishers of Hebrew Books in Fürth at the opening of the 18^th century. Beginning with the ownership of Shmu’el Böenft Shnur (perhaps derived from the French “Bon Fit”, a translation of the Hebrew name “Yakar”), this volume was passed to his son Zalman, a prominent cantor and preacher at Mainz. Joseph son of Zalman received the volume after his father. A further Footprint with a long inscription describes a later owner who also carried the surname of this family of printers.

2. The Meyerhoff collection includes books which carry the inscriptions of the “שלש קהלות”, the Tripartite Communities of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek; these inscriptions provide insight to the literary and bookselling environment of these communities.

Here is the inscription on the title of our copy of ‘Livyat Ḥen’ by Efraim b. Shmu’el Zanvil Hekscher, printed in Altona 1732-33 [2]:

The author of the volume, Efriam Hekscher, was a prominent figure on the Altona Bet-Din, along with the head of the Tripartite Community, Yehezkel Katzenellenbogen.  The former was the publisher of the latter’s responsa. Katzenellenbogen’s books were printed at Altona, and because of this evidence within this copy, we can see them traveling to the other communities of the Tripartite.

Here is the Footprint describing the movement of the volume: from the author to his son to a Parnas in Wandsbek. The inscriptions indicate that the receiver gave it to his son as an inheritance.

3. Our copy of Menorat ha-Maor, published in 1824 in Slavuta, Ukraine by the Shapira brothers, was among  the books at the Offenbach Archival Depot during the Second World War. Previous to that, it was a gift (as a newly printed volume) to the Av-Beth-Din of “Brisk” (Best-Litovsk, Belarus), Avraham Katzenellenbogen.

4. Our copy of Maʻaśeh ḥoresh ṿe-ḥoshev, published in 1711 in Frankfurt, begins on its page of Haskamot (approbations)[3]. This volume is a small Yiddish book written to teach mathematics and arithmetic, and carries tables of the exchange rates and some prices of items that would’ve interested a Jewish merchant.

Our copy is bound in its original boards and heavy leather binding, which withstood travel and heavy use.

It contains two inscriptions by the same owner: one in German at the rear and one in Hebrew at the front. These inscriptions record the buyer’s purchase of the volume for a friend, or perhaps for his father. The buyer records his travel from Poland to Peckelsheim, then a hamlet in Westphalia, Germany, using sentimental (and maybe once accented) German; it is noted in his inscription that he traveled from Poland to Germany.  Perhaps he was a merchant, interested in exchange rates for Frankfurt and Holland (shown).

5. Finally, I cataloged a copy of Jacob b. Asher’s Arba’a Turim, published in Augsburg in 1540, by Hayyim Shahor. Our copy is white and fresh, and the beautiful fonts and inks are in excellent condition.

There are pages in this volume which are censored, and some heavily, such as on  these leaves in Hilkhot ‘Avodah Zarah:

Appended to the end of the Towson copy are manuscript leaves roughly contemporary to the imprint. These leaves are water damaged; they have a stab-opening which pierced through all of the manuscript leaves. At the heading of the leaves is a damaged leaf in Polish script, which once belonged to a ledger, likely of a bookseller.

The volumes which make up the collection of rare books in the Joseph Meyerhoff – Towson University Collection have journeyed through many paths to reach their present home. Evidence of travel, war, the Holocaust, and American Jewish Studies has traveled with the volumes and continue to accompany them; the Footprints Project has given us a platform to trace and organize the provenance of these volumes.

[1]   The exact date of printing is contradictory between the title information and that on the colophon. The title reads ’Shevat 327’, i.e. Feb. 1567, while the colophon reads ’ … today, sixth day (Friday), 5326 (1566)’ but does not include the month.

[2] Work started at the beginning of Elul (August-September) 1732, finished “Bekhi-Tov” Shvat (January) 1733. Likely “Bekhi-Tov” is referring to the closing of the month.

[3] It carries the approbations of Naphtali ha-kohen Katz (1649-1718) of Frankfurt, dated Tuesday 8 Tevet 1710;  Samuel ha-kohen Schotten of Darmstadt, dated Friday, parashat Vayigash, 1710; and Hirsch Spitz Sega”l of Worms, dated Thursday 10 Tevet 1710.

Miryam Gordon is a student in Johns’ Hopkins’ Museum Studies program.  Miryam completed a digital curation internship, during which she worked on all aspects of Footprints.  She has generously shared her final thoughts and feedback on the project, and has allowed us to reproduce a portion of it here.

Collaboration is a necessary ingredient for effective scholarship and creation of new knowledge. While collaboration has long been in use, the innovation behind Footprints is the digital aggregation of multiple bodies of data regarding Jewish book circulation into one location. Libraries and information that have been scattered around the world are being virtually reunited through the project. Footprints has managed to become an effective model due to its community approach, transparency, accessibility, and flexibility. While the project may not yet be perfect in all areas, it had been set up with systems and policies in place that are causing it to be effective in each of these areas.

1. Building an Engaged Community

Success in Digital Humanities comes from an understanding that scholarship is a social undertaking. Current technological advances can be used to “share and exchange skillsets, continuous change, and collective decision making” (Chesner, Lehman, Shear, & Teplitsky, 2018). From its founding, Footprints has been a collaboration between scholars at Jewish Theological Seminary, Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh, and Stony Brook University. The advisory board consists of historians, scholars, librarians, and other experts from institutions such as Queens College, Oxford University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Jewish Historical Museum, and the National Library of Israel (Footprints, n.d., “Credits”). In addition to individuals from these institutions, even before the site’s creation the directors had many conversations with other experts to gain their feedback and even conducted beta testing to ensure that everything was working appropriately. Interest in Footprints has risen due to conversations at conferences and on social media. As interested parties hear about Footprints and its purpose, they recognize its value in making previously hidden collections widely accessible.

Footprints’ success relies on a vast network of invested contributors. If only those that were initially involved were the ones contributing, the database would not go anywhere. It relies on a community of users to get to a truly valuable critical mass. Footprints has an increasingly growing list of institutions and scholars around the world that are working to add data to the site. Its directors encourage colleagues and scholars to add information, as well as encouraging professors to teach using the repository to build continued interest and involvement (Lehman, 2016). Footprints is working with libraries and institutions from all over the world to capture and upload information from their books and other resources to the site. Examples include: Leo Baeck Institute, Russian State Library, Washington University, Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Library at the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at University of Pennsylvania, Yeshiva University Library, and the Material Evidence in Incunabula Project at Oxford. There are over fifteen individual scholars and researchers listed on Footprints’ site as having worked on the project in some capacity (Footprints, n.d., “Credits”). Contributors to the project have been varied and located across the world.

Without encouraging and supporting these users and contributors, Footprints would not have seen the success that it has to this point. However, the project directors still need to work on creating a centralized method of communication between contributors. While many individuals and institutions are actively working on the project, they would benefit from a centralized place to communicate and share insights. Footprints’ blog and twitter feed are places where this does occur, but that is controlled exclusively by the project’s directors. Some user-generated content would encourage said individuals and give them a stake in the process of building the repository. Perhaps a discussion board or a comments section under the records would be helpful in this down the line. (Ed. note: We do have a Google Group for Footprints contributors, but we could do better in promoting and encouraging its use)

2. Transparency

Footprints is touted as a scholarly project and so it is essential for it to be transparent to be trusted and taken seriously. Each footprint record cites the evidence from which it is derived. If users wanted to, they could easily view the source from which the contributor determined that information (Footprints, n.d., “How to Enter a Footprint”). To address those that are skeptical about the idea of crowdsourcing, Footprints takes its data integrity seriously by training and supervising its contributors. Once data is entered, the directors have a formal moderation structure in place to ensure quality control (Chesner, Lehman, Shear, & Teplitsky, 2018). When records have errors or do not confirm to standards in some way, they can be flagged manually or automatically for more experienced users to view and moderate. Without clean and accurate data, Footprints is nothing so this point is especially important to its founders and contributors.

3. Accessibility

The entire purpose of Footprints is to make otherwise inaccessible data accessible to the public. Therefore, Footprints is an open-source and open-access tool. Its source code is easily available on Github and can freely be copied, distributed, and modified, as long as the changes are tracked in the source files. The data that is available on the site is held under a Creative Commons Attribution + Share Alike 4.0 License. This means that it can be freely copied, distributed, and modified. Attribution to the original author and changes must be tracked in the source code (Footprints, n.d. “Frequently Asked Questions”). Scholars are choosing to add their newly researched information to Footprints, rather than saving it for their own publications, because they see the value in the “trusted crowdsourcing model” of Footprints (ibid.). The new data is able to be put to use immediately and users are able to frame research questions as well as use the database to answer their questions. Footprints allows for an immediate give and take by scholars regarding the research they have done or want done.

While the data from individual records is available, improvements can be made to make it more easily and intuitively findable. Advances can also be made to put the material into its context, with historical backgrounds, timelines, and biographies included on the site. This would truly make the data accessible and easy to understand by those that may not be experts in the field.

4. Flexibility

Footprints’ openness to technological experimentation with different platforms and media for ingesting content has contributed to its success since inception almost ten years ago. What grew out of a conversations among experts has become a worldwide project due to the project’s willingness to adjust as situations demanded. It is often assumed that crowdsourcing projects start out well and then stagnate, but if the developers move with the project then they can be successful for longer terms. Footprints has a focus of Jewish books that were published from the late 1400s until the 1850s, but the project is flexible with the definition of Jewish books, as well as those dates when specific situations warrant. The project directors have chosen to focus the year 2018 on incunabula to develop that area of the database, while also adding data related to other texts when pertinent (Shear, 2017). They are committed to ingesting as many footprints as possible and will look for incunabula first, but will not stop there.

Footprints is set up to allow for micro and macro data to be added to allow for as many types of uploads as possible. Larger institutions can add their data by using the batch upload option, while individual scholars may choose to input information piece by piece (Chesner, November 2016). The various methods for adding information show Footprints’ commitment to as many types of contributors as possible. They welcome contributions from these large institutions, smaller archives, private collections, as well as single pieces of data that scholars and librarians come across through their own research. By casting a wide net for contributions, Footprints is allowing the project to grow and develop organically.

Conclusion

The study of the Jewish book is a perfect example of a field that benefits significantly from a collaborative crowd-sourced model such as Footprints. The scholarship is so dispersed that a united approach to gathering that information will result in increased knowledge regarding the Jews who owned these books and the world in which they lived. Footprints has managed to continuously build an effective model for collaborative crowdsourcing by combining the best ideas for a successful model and plans for future improvements. The co-directors have developed the project by building a community around it, by ensuring that their data and its sources are transparent, that users have access to the information that is being collected, and that there is room for growth and flexibility in their future plans. As Footprints continues to develop and expand its coverage, it will be fascinating to watch the new insights that are learned about the historical time period it covers and their implications for today.

As we have mentioned time and again in the last seven months, we have been working hard in 2018 to gather data on the movements of Hebrew incunabula (that is, books produced from the invention of moveable type until the year 1501).  As of today, we have 1226 records for books from this era, and the data continues to grow. We have already ingested data from the Jewish Theological Seminary’s extensive collection, the collection at Yeshiva University, the University of Pennsylvania, and many others.  Still more are in process, and will be added soon to our corpus.

One of our in-process batches is based on Dr. Adri K. Offenberg’s list of Hebrew incunabula missing after World War II.  Dr. Offenberg painstakingly scoured lists of pre-WWII European collections to find incunabula, and followed up with those that remained extant to find what was lost.  Unfortunately, many libraries (and their caretakers) had been destroyed, and their collections scattered to the four winds.  One of these collections was the library of Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau (modern-day Wrocław, in Poland), and some of its items have been appearing in Footprints search results.

To my delight, one of these was an incunable, the commentary of Abraham ibn Ezra on the Bible (Naples, 1488), and one of the books listed as missing in Dr. Offenberg’s list!  The book can be found today at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and its Breslau provenance is duly cited in Iakerson’s catalog of incunabula at JTS, number 47a.  Slowly but surely, our work on Footprints is (virtually) reuniting collections long thought lost to the world.

Consider this blog post part of a soft roll-out of a new concept here at Footprints HQ:  we are dubbing calendar year 2018 as the “Year of Incunabula.”  (If you read the last blog post from my colleague Michelle Chesner, you already know about some of our efforts in this direction.) Although we will continue to take in data on post-1500 imprints, we  have begun to focus our efforts on adding as many footprints of pre-1500 Hebrew printed books as we can between now and December 31, 2018.  (Stay tuned for the announcement–around this time next year–of 2019’s theme.)

In designing and launching Footprints, we explored many approaches to gathering data..  Some of our colleagues suggested focusing on a particular set of literary works and their editions and dissemination. (A wonderful model of this kind of research is The Archaeology of Reading at Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and University of London, with our advisory board member Anthony Grafton as one of the participants.)  Such a project–working from a limited corpus– allows great strides to be made in a limited amount of time.  Others suggested that we look at the output of a particular printer (we could have started by tracking down everything printed by Soncino) or the books printed in a particular city (Amsterdam in the 17th century).  Others suggested that we focus on the formation of particular collections.  

We heard these suggestions but resisted going this route as the project started.  Despite all of the potential in these options, we did not want to limit the scope of the project in the moments of its inception.   By looking at “Jewish” books (including books printed in Hebrew or other Jewish languages; books in non-Jewish languages on Jewish topics; and books owned by Jews regardless of content) printed in different places and times and their movement across time and place without limitations, we were able to explore the possibilities and limits of this new  kind of research project. In the iterative process of digital scholarship, we didn’t want to foreclose fruitful lines of discussion before we even got started.  And while this open approach has had some costs, the benefit can be seen in the architecture and flexibility of our database.  No doubt casting the net widely leads to some inefficiencies but other efficiencies are gained:  if we were focusing on production by Daniel Bomberg only, would it have made sense for me to sit in a rare book room and examine a Bomberg book carefully while ignoring the riches in a Soncino imprint bound with it?  If we were focusing on a set list of books and I found references to these in an estate inventory, should I put aside the books owned by a particular collector not on this list?

That open approach will continue  as we build the database, but we have decided for several reasons to make a special push on incunabula this year. Choosing to focus on incunabula benefits us the most right now for building Footprints in a more systematic way, and also enables researchers interested in who read, owned, bought and sold these books to acquire the most comprehensive view of this area of the history of the Hebrew book as possible. You could say, we want to begin again from the beginning.

Toward this end,  we are joining forces with the 15CBooktrade project led by Cristina Dondi of Oxford University, a long-time advisor to Footprints. Our colleagues at 15CBooktrade have started to see the finish line in collecting information about incunabula in an  ambitious and incredibly rich database, Material Evidence in Incunabula  (MEI). Thanks to a generous grant, 15CBooktrade/MEI will hire 3 dedicated researchers to work on Hebrew incunabula for six months in 2018.  One will be based in Oxford, focusing on collections in the UK and northern Europe; one in Jerusalem, focusing on Israeli collections; and one in Italy, focusing on the richness of Italian and some other European collections. These researchers will enter all of the copy-specific features of incunabula in their areas into MEI and also record the “footprints” into our database.  

Meanwhile, our goal is to cover the major collections of Hebrew incunabula in North America.  We’ll be focused on the rich collections in the New York area, Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Ottawa, as well as smaller collections or single copies in Los Angeles, Chicago, Hartford, Providence,  Bloomington, IN, and Provo Utah. (I am heading to Chicago soon where I will see the three Hebrew incunabula at the Newberry Library.)  We are especially eager to hear from members of our trusted crowdsourcing community who would like to work on some of these collections.   We are also reaching out to private collectors and encouraging them to join the effort.

As we continue our work with book lists, estate inventories, auction catalogues, and scholarly articles looking for “historical copies” as well as working from extant books in rare book rooms, we will focus our efforts this year on the incunables. As we learn about early modern Jewish owners of non-Hebrew incunabula we will enter those as well. We have 3 first-year undergraduates at the University of Pittsburgh eager to get to work in the spring term as part of the successful First Experiences in Research program run by Pitt’s Office of Undergraduate Research and we also intend to hire one research assistant who will input information from the rare book collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary.   We are also looking for interns in the cities mentioned above and faculty supervisors who are looking for hands-on research opportunities for their students.  

Does this mean we are abandoning the “big tent” approach to data collection?  Not at all: we remain committed to the idea that we want to ingest as many footprints as possible. We continue to work with partner libraries, downloading provenance data from catalogs and preparing them for upload to Footprints.  When we embed researchers to cover particular library collections (as we are doing now with the Marsh’s Library, Dublin)  we will ask them to look at the incunabula first but not to stop there! We continue to welcome contributions from crowd-sourcers and we are still happy to serve as a repository for datasets generated by independent research projects.  Surely we are always on the  lookout for other footprints as we hunt down the incunabula.   

We are not choosing  between a specific topic  and an open approach.  (But we are also not just saying “que sera sera” and leaving it at that.) Rather, we intend for the focused approach and the big tent model to co-exist; the focus on incunabula will enable us to concentrate on one area of Hebrew book history while maintaining our commitment to flexibility, which has  been the hallmark of our progress to date.  

As always, if you or your institution or your students want to join the fun, just let us know.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Footprints thrives on collaboration, and it is wonderful when we see how collaboration with others can yield positive fruits as well.

In September, Javier del Barco started work at the Archbishop Marsh’s Library in Dublin.  The Archbishop Marsh collected about 200 Hebrew and Yiddish books in his collection, many of which have interesting stories to tell, and the library has partnered with Footprints to catalog its Judaica, and record its provenance into Footprints  (Footprints will be added to the database at the completion of the project).  A few weeks ago, Professor del Barco found a previously unknown incunabulum (a book printed from the invention of moveable type to the year 1501) in the collection: a commentary of Nahmanides on the Bible from Lisbon, 1489, in excellent condition, as part of his work on the collection.

The subject of incunabula brings us to our next announcement: we are excited to announce our next partnership: with the 15cBOOKTRADE/Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI).  MEI collects similar data to Footprints, but with an emphasis only on books printed in the 15th century. We have partnered with them to collect data on Hebrew incunabula (a subset not easily accessible due to language and other limitations), which will be uploaded to both the MEI and the Footprints databases. To do this, MEI will be hiring three research associates: one in the United Kingdom, one in Italy, and one in Israel, to focus on studying the provenance of Hebrew incunabula in those places. We look forward to applications for this project!  Note that the deadline for applications is 31 October 2017.

As always, if you are interested in partnering with Footprints in any way: as an individual interested in entering Footprints; as an institution or a private collector with already cataloged materials that can be exported and uploaded to our database; as an institution or private collector with not-yet cataloged material that is interested in working with us on a cataloging/provenance project; or in any other way, please be in touch!  You can reach us at footprints@columbia.edu