The Judaica Collection - a short historical overview

It cannot be established with certainty which book, in what is now the Judaica Collection, that was the first one acquired, but an educated guess would be a manuscript or an early print containing the Hebrew Bible. The Renaissance interest in the Biblical text, together with the Humanists' linguistic interests, made it mandatory for  ambitious 16th and 17th century princes to collect a library of some standing, preferably including the most beatiful Medieval illuminated manuscripts available. In the 18th century, "The Age of Explorations", several Hebrew manuscripts were acquired for The Royal Library (until 1793 the King's private collection) through " The Arabian Voyage" (also known as the Carsten Niebuhr Expedition). The Age of Enlightenment and its interest in other cultures and religion, as well as the on-set of Jewish Studies and Biblical Studies as academic dicisplines in the 19th century, led to other acquisitions of publications devoted to Jewish culture and history.

In 1932, The Royal Library acquired the private collection of ex-Chief Rabbi, Professor David Simonsen, all in all some 45.000 volumes. App. 20.000 volumes is estimated to be included in what after World War II became the Judaica Collection (for a few decades also an organisational unit, the Judaica Department); the remaining volumes are included in other collections, e.g. the Oriental Collection. Also David Simonsen's personal archives were acquired, containing correspondence and other archivals of value for students and scholars of Jewish history and culture, in Denmark and abroad.

The fate of the Judaica Collection during World War II - that of not being destroyed by neither bombs, nor the Nazi occupational forces - makes it very interesting from an European perspective. Also he rescue of the Danish Jews helped was instrumental in putting focus on the Judaica Collection of The Royal Library. A number of separate collections were donated or offered for sale to the library in the first decades after the war, often in gratitude to the Danish population for the rescue of the Danish Jews to Sweden in October 1943. Among these collections can be mentioned those of Lazarus Goldschmidt (Hebraica and Judaica, 1949), Shea Tenenbaum (Yiddish) and Israel London (Yiddish, 1974). Also Danish Collections of Jiddica was acquired through purchase, e.g. from S. Beilin (1959), and through donations, e.g Det jiddische bibliotek (יידישער ארבייטער לעזע-זאל אין קאפענהאגען), acquired in 1967.

The inauguration of the Black Diamond in 1999 gave the Judaica Collection access to its own reading room (earlier Center for Orientalia and Judaica, now Reading Room E-West). Apart form the reference collection available there, the collection is otherwise shelved in closed stacks. All items in the Judaica Collection are to be sought and ordered in The Royal Library's online catalogue REX.

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