Books Like Sapphires: From the Library of Congress Judaica Collection

Books Like Sapphires spotlights selections from the Library of Congress' storied Hebraic collection. Tracing the history of Judaica collecting in the twentieth-century United States, the book showcases varied works, detailing their background alongside vibrant color images. The artifacts chosen reflect the diversity of the collection's holdings across time and the Jewish diaspora. These include Hebrew bibles, literature of the sages, prayer books, poetry, and children's literature, as well as a play, wedding poems, synagogue dedications, and other artifacts from Jewish communities around the world. Engaging and accessible, Books Like Sapphires celebrates these works as well as the history of Jewish philanthropy and the patrons whose foresight helped build an important archive of Hebraic arts and culture.

The artifacts in this book are drawn from the Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress which Jacob Schiff founded in 1912 when he donated nearly 10,000 books and pamphlets that spanned over four centuries of writing and thought. Today, the Hebraic Section is a world-renowned resource, a research center that preserves roughly 200,000 works--from Bibles to rabbinic texts, artists' books to literature--written in Aramaic, Hebrew, Ladino, Syriac, Yiddish, and other languages.