The JTS Rare Book Room: A Discussion with Rabbi Cliff Miller
Co-Sponsored by the Torah Fund and CAI
Thursday, Feb. 4, 8 pm
The Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan houses what has been called the greatest Judaica library in our hemisphere.
As a cataloger, Rabbi Miller enters descriptions into databases and tries to make more information about more of the books available to more people.
Books or fragments of books are housed in the Rare Book Room for any number of reasons. Some are rare and precious because of who owned them or who autographed them. Or particularly beautiful bindings. Or illustrations. Sometimes the book itself is quite ordinary, but the notes in the margin and the person who wrote them are treasured.
Officially, Rabbi Miller specializes in rabbinic literature, but in fact he has handled many sorts of books, and a few manuscripts, some of them from before we had any printing presses, and a few electronic books. Some of the very oldest and the very newest forms of books.
Some are rare and valuable because so few books were ever printed in that place. Or in that language or dialect. Sometimes the place of publication on the title page is a lie. The cover may come from a different book entirely.
Rabbi Miller recently cataloged books that included parts printed in Aramaic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino, Lakota, Latin, Marathi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Syriac, Yiddish, and hundreds of other languages he never learned. How?
Some of us are valued simply because we are very old. Rabbi Miller catalogs books 200, 400, even 600 years old. Often a book does not tell when it was printed. What are some of his strategies for discovering the date of printing?
Thousands of the books that Rabbi Miller processes have never before been cataloged, even though JTS have had them since before the 1966 fire, in which many lost their covers and title pages. Discovering authors, title, publisher, translator, and subjects can be as much fun as solving crosswords.
Muslims refer to Jews as People of the Book. As a library cataloger (Master of Library Service from Rutgers) for the past 30 years, Rabbi Miller thinks Jews are People of the Books.
Who doesn’t love family reunions? When I can reunite volume 1 with volume 6 of the same set, or put back together the first half and last half of a book, that were torn apart 50 or 60 years ago, I am happy. — Rabbi Miller
Rabbi Miller entered Seminary at JTS as a freshman in 1957. JTS awarded him a master’s degree and rabbinic ordination and an honorary doctorate. Rabbi Miller taught in Cantor’s Institute and Seminary College of Jewish Music.
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