Schneerson Collection

Dear friends! Happy to inform you that the books of the Schneerson collection are available to the visitors of the brunch of the Russian State Library at Jewish Museum again. For three years they stayed in temporary stacks. Now everyone can see them in the new reading room.
Here you can check working hours of the library: https://www.rsl.ru/ru/4readers/rooms/emict
All digital copies are also available online: https://search.rsl.ru/en =1&af=1&c=shn

ברוכים הבאים!

Друзья! Снова открыта для посещений Библиотека Шнеерсона – отдел РГБ в Еврейском музее. Книги были недоступны несколько лет из-за реконструкции музейного пространства. И вот теперь книги вновь могут увидеть посетители музея.
Часы работы библиотеки: https://www.rsl.ru/ru/4readers/rooms/emict
Все электронные копии книг можно прочесть в открытом доступе: https://search.rsl.ru/ru =1&af=1&c=shn
Добро пожаловать!

Dear friends, we wish you a happy and fruitful, but most importantly a healthy new year! We hope that this year will bring you everything you have dreamed of and everything you have striven to.
This Rosh ha-shanah blessing from R. Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson was addressed to Shlomo Hanoch Henich in 1928. Hopefully it will cheep you up in these uncertain COVID-times!
Shanah tovah u-metukah!

In the books published on the territory of the Russian Empire there is always a Russian translation of the book title and author. It was made because of the censorship, but those translations are a genre on its own. Those who were responsible for the translations didn't master Russian and sometimes Russian titles look funny gaining absolutely different meaning.
Look on this title page! It is responsa called Emek Halacha by Zeev Wolf ben Yehuda, published in Vilnius in 1845. And what does the Russian translation say? Witty investigations!

Depiction of the Temple is an inseparable part of every Passover Haggadah demonstrating redemption in the Messianic era.
The first picture below is taken from the Haggadah printed in Pisa, 1801, which follows the tradition of the famous 1609 Venice Haggadah coping from it the depiction of the Temple. It features the Messiah approaching the gates of Jerusalem and the prophet Elijah blowing the shofar. Both sun and moon appear on the both sides of the picture fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah: "Thy sun shall no more set nor shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord will be thy everlasting light and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."
The second picture comes from the Amsterdam Haggadah printed in 1765. It was inspired by the different tradition - the one of the 1695 Amsterdam Haggadah and features only the Temple, but not the Messiah.

Have a look at this astonishing title page!
The book is Keli Yakar by Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz published in Amsterdam in 1767, a famous Torah commentary. But what happens on the bottom of the page? There is some scene depicted there, and the building on the background looks suspiciously similar to a church. We need your help with deciphering this woodcut! Do you have any ideas what might be pictured there?

The iconographic depiction of the Western Wall is usually easy recognizable and features masonry wall with several cypresses above it and buildings with cupolas on the both sides of the wall.
It became customary to depict the Western Wall in such a way in the 19th century. Since then, one can find the Western Wall pictured so on different ritual objects such as kiddush cups (the one below was made in Poland in the second half of the 19th century) - or wall paintings in synagogues (for example, in Tailors' synagogue in Buhuşi (Bohosh), c. 1900). It could serve as a printer's mark - the Back family of printers based in Jerusalem had the Western Wall as their symbol. Or it could be a decoration on the stamp of someone living in Jerusalem.
The pictures of the kiddish cup and the wall painting courtesy of Center for Jewish Art.

The Temple is one of the central notions in Judaism, and not only its external was depicted 📖 In the books, one can also find schemes picturing the structure of the Temple and the location of all the Temple attributes.
The left picture comes from the book "Zurat Beit ha-Mikdash ha-Atid" by Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (Grodno, 1788). The right one appears in the Romm edition of Talmud Bavli, Masekhet Me'ilah (Vilna, 1885) and depicts the Second Temple.

Both Temples are believed to be destroyed on 9 Av. Since then, many Jewish scholars and artists tried to imagine how the Temple had looked like and to picture it.
The left naive picture appears in Sefer Josippon published in Amsterdam, 1743 and depicts the Temple built by Herod. It's the woodcut technique that creates the atmosphere of naivety, because it doesn't allow to depict small details.
The right sophisticated picture comes from the Amsterdam Passover Haggadah first printed in 1695 (our image is taken from the second edition published in 1712). In the 1695 Passover Haggadah, for the first time in Jewish history of printing, the technique of copper plate engraving was used allowing to create much more detailed images.

Remember the picture of a mysterious woman with two children we posted a while ago? We found it in the archive and could not identify who the people on the picture are. Now, with the help of our subscribers, we finally solved the problem!
The woman on the photo is Necha (Nacha) Rivkin with her children - Ella (born 1921) and Sema (Sholom) (born 1926). Nacha Rivkin met the Schneerson family in Rostov after 1915 and became their life-long friend - there are letters addressed to her from all the daughters of R. Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, his wife, Nechama Dina, and his mother, Sterna Sara. In 1920, Rivkin (nee Heber) married Moshe Ber Rivkin, the prominent Chabad Hasid and Rabbi, who was sent to Palestine four years later to administer the yeshiva Torat Emet. Rivkin was deeply involved in Jewish education - in 1929, already residing in the USA, together with other two teachers she started the Shulamith School for Girls in Borough Park, Brooklyn, where she taught kindergarten and first grade. Her son, Sholom, 2yo on this photo, became a prominent Rabbi in the USA and a world-known expert in Jewish law.
The work on the project is conducted within the framework of the JMTC grant program with financial support of A.I. Klyachin.

After leaving the USSR, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe continued to help the observant Jews in the Soviet Union as he did while residing in the USSR. But it became harder with each passing month. Year 1929 was a turning point and after 1930 there was almost nothing that could be done. The Soviet anti-religious campaign became fiercer, Soviet laws more unwelcoming and Joint who provided funds to support Soviet Jews in the 1920s, now became convinced that the situation was hopeless.
But in late 1928/1929 there was still hope, and Y.Y. Schneerson labored hard to convince Joint, European Jewish communities and wealthy individuals to donate money for Soviet Jews. Thus, Y.Y. Schneerson wrote numerous letters to the Jewish religious leaders describing the dreadful situation of the Jews in the USSR and asking for help. In his archive, there are several letters addressed to the Chief Rabbis of England and France on this issue.
The work on the project is conducted within the framework of the JMTC grant program with financial support of A.I. Klyachin.

The books received as a gift always have some sentimental value. Rebbe Rayatz being a very meticulous person used to write down on the title page that a particular book was given to him as a gift by someone.
It was Eliyahu Chaim Althoyz who presented him with this one - Mar'ot ha-Tzobe'ot by Moshe Alshich printed in Furth in 1765, with a finely ornamented title-page. As the inscription says, "A gift from Reb E.H. [Eliyahu Chaim Althoyz], winter 5665 (1905)". The stamp on the top of the page says in Russian "E.P. Althayz, Nikolaev" demonstrating that the book once belonged to Eliyahu Althoyz.

We are sure that while being on quarantine you already know your own apartment like the back of your hand. Now it's time to study better the apartment of Y.Y. Schneerson in St. Petersburg on the corner of Pestel str. and Mokhovaya str. Fortunately, there is a plan of it in the archive.
The apartment consisted of 13 rooms. Room №13 was a kitchen, which was connected with a bathroom (the room above room №10).
Moreover, the archive features a cost sheet for the renovation of the apartment. It included:
- reflooring almost the whole apartment;
- plastering the ceilings anew;
- arranging a new lavatory;
- fixing doors and windows, etc.
All of that costed about 850 rubles - quite substantial amount for the mid-1920s.

The work on the project is conducted within the framework of the JMTC grant program with financial support of A.I. Klyachin.