On September 17, 2025, dozens of members of the Yale University and New Haven community visited the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library to view stunning artifacts related to the fall Jewish holidays: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shmini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah.
Fall Jewish Studies Pop-Up Exhibit held at the Beinecke
The pop-up exhibition, curated by Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at Yale University, and Konstanze H. Kunst, the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Librarian for Jewish Studies at Yale University Library, brought together doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, librarians, and faculty members in a collaborative project. Drawing inspiration from the thousands of rare Jewish books and manuscripts in Yale’s collection, Gribetz and Kunst hosted their first pop-up exhibition last spring before Passover to highlight special haggadot and other items related to that holiday, and they are planning another exhibition in advance of Purim next semester, on February 12, 2026. “We decided to use these exhibitions as an opportunity to create a community of learning around rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera, and to share the beauty, diversity, and depth of Jewish culture, ritual, and history with members of the university and broader New Haven community,” Gribetz shared. During a pop-up exhibition, a curated set of rare books and manuscripts are put on display for a few hours, and anyone who wishes to view them can do so. Everyone is welcome to join: those who are experts in these texts and traditions and those who have never heard of them before.
During the fall pop-up exhibit, students, faculty, staff, and community members could be seen pouring over gorgeous illuminations, musical annotations, and rare printed materials from around the world in multiple languages.
Among the many books on display was a 1493 imprint of the Arba’ah Turim (‘Four Columns’), a 14th-century Jewish legal code written by Jacob ben Asher. It details, among other things, the laws of the Jewish holidays. Tali Winkler, Hebrew Metadata Librarian at Yale Library, explained that this specific imprint was the first book printed with moveable metal type in any language in the Ottoman Empire. It was printed by two brothers from a prominent Jewish family likely expelled from Spain the year before.
This map indicates the places from which pilgrims traveled.
They opened a print shop upon their arrival in Istanbul and used type and paper imported from Spain and Italy. An inscription in the book, written in Judeo-Arabic, a variety of Arabic spoken by Jews in the Arabic-speaking world and written in Hebrew characters, describes a pilgrimage undertaken by two brothers in 1563 to the gravesite of a rabbi in Nusaybin, a city located today on the Turkish-Syrian border, to pray for healing for one of the brothers. Unfortunately, soon after returning, he died. In the inscription, the writer mentions the various places from which Jewish pilgrims came for this pilgrimage. This gravesite remained a site of Jewish pilgrimage into the 20th century.
Complementing this code of Jewish law were two Sifrei Minhagim (‘Books of Customs’), both produced in Amsterdam. The first, printed in 1727, explains the practices for Jewish holidays in Yiddish with Hebrew, while the second, printed in 1767, does so in Hebrew with Spanish. These books provide instructions for the blessings and rituals of the holidays along with vivid woodcut illustrations that portray various customs: blowing the shofar during the month of Elul, building a sukkah, beating the aravot (branches of a willow tree), and examining one’s shadow during Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot. Books of customs with and without woodcuts were bestsellers in Jewish communities for more than three centuries. They circulated widely in many languages and were printed not only in Amsterdam but in places such as Cracow, Venice, Prague, Zhovkva, and Berlin. Oren Okhovat, a postdoctoral affiliate in Modern Jewish History whose research focuses on transatlantic networks of Portuguese Jewish merchants in the seventeenth century, read the Spanish and Hebrew instructions to visitors and situated the book within the culture of Sephardic Jews — descendants of those expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the late fifteenth century.
Postcard featuring woodcuts from the Yiddish Book of Customs printed in Amsterdam by Shlomoh ben Yosef Proops in 1727 or 1728. BM700 I6919 1727. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Kunst created postcards of items displayed in the pop-up exhibit. Visitors could take them home as small souvenirs.
Alongside these Jewish books of customs, visitors encountered a German book about the customs of Central-European Jews authored by the Protestant theologian Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz and printed in 1748/49.
Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz. Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden. Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1749. Mcf31 748. Beinecke Library. Yale University.
Scott Libson, the Special Collections Librarian at the Yale Divinity Library explained its rich and detailed engravings relating to the Jewish fall holidays to visitors. He also explained the fascinating phenomenon of Christian scholars who published over seventy different works on Jewish religious practices from 1500 to the end of the eighteenth century across Europe. Visitors were able to learn about kiddush levana, the sanctification of the new moon, which occurs outside in the first half of the months when the moon is visible, including at the conclusion of Yom Kippur.
Islamic world curator Michelle al-Ferzly showed visitors two Arabic manuscripts related to the new year and calendrical calculations in the Islamic tradition, which is also based on the observation of the moon. One of the manuscripts (Arabic MSS Suppl. 620), written in Arabic and Persian and dated to 1875/76, contained an incipit of a short prayer for the Islamic new year. The second book, an illustrated Persian manuscript of the Wonders of the Creation, included depictions of the astrological signs of Virgo and Libra, which correspond to the beginning of the fall season. Visitors were especially impressed by the beautiful illuminations of the zodiac and the depictions of the phases of the moon in these manuscripts.
Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad Qazwīnī (c. 1203-1283). Wonders of Creation. Copied in 1806. Persian MSS +65. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Noah Avigan, a graduate student studying the Hebrew Bible in the Religious Studies Department, guided visitors through a prayer book (mahzor) for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that was created by the Jewish community of Constantine, Algeria, in 1788. Of particular interest was the note written by the prolific Algerian Jewish author and rabbi Yosef ben David Renassia (1879–1962) dated to “1918 … the year of the terrible war” that describes how the community leaders had raised funds for the book’s rebinding. The book contains many well-known prayers for the high holidays recited by Jewish communities around the world alongside liturgical poems that were more particular to this community. One section, with instructions for blowing the shofar (ram’s horn), incorporates a kabbalistic tradition that relates the different shofar blasts with the three biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Liturgy for New Year and Day of Atonement, Rite of Constantine, Algeria. Copied in Constantine, 1788. North African Jewish Manuscript Collection. MS.1825.0253. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
In another prayerbook, made in 1800 on the island of Corfu, visitors could also see prayers for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in exquisite Sephardic half-cursive script. The style and imagery of the colorful illustrated title page of the liturgy of the Day of Atonement reflect the connectedness of corfiot Jews to general culture while possibly evoking the two columns of Solomon’s temple.
Title page of the Day of Atonement Liturgy. In Jewish prayer book for the New Year and Day of Atonement. Copied in Corfu, 1800-1810. Ms Hebrew 56. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
The exhibit featured two Yiddish artifacts, which Emily Mazza, whose doctoral research focuses on Eastern European and US-American Jewish history, read and translated for visitors to the exhibit. The first was the 1946 Rosh ha-Shanah issue of Undzer Shtime (“Our Voice”), a Yiddish periodical published by survivors in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp after the Second World War from 1945–1947.
Title page of the Tashlekh service, printed in Warsaw, 1872. BEIN 2018 1235. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Among the articles in this issue is a Yiddish translation of the mishnaic tractate Rosh Hashanah. The issue’s brief English editorial expresses the desperation of the survivors regarding news of new pogroms and being stranded in the DP camp due to emigration restrictions since the liberation, but ends with the life-affirming sentence: “And when the Shofarim will break the silence of the Synagogues we will all in contemplation think of this great miracle—the miracle of our survival. ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ The people of Israel is still alive, and we are not afraid to face the future.”
The second item, a very rare Yiddish pamphlet containing the rites for the symbolic casting away of sins (tashlich) during the Jewish New Year, is one of only two known surviving copies in the world. It is among dozens of personalized prayers and supplications, called tehines, held in Yale’s Judaica collection. Such texts were often written by and for women, and traveling peddlers would sell them to individuals throughout Eastern and Central Europe.
The powerful melodies of prayers such as Avinu Malkenu or Kol Nidre are an intrinsic characteristic of the sensual experience of the High Holidays. The pop-up displayed two scores which were expertly explained by David Floyd, Yale’s Gilmore Music Library’s Librarian for Music Metadata and Acquisitions. Mateh Ahron (‘Staff of Aaron’) comprises hymns for the New Year and the Day of Atonement for cantor, choir and organ accompaniment, composed and published by the cantor Adolf Grünzweig (1829–1905).
Adolf Grünzweig’s Mateh Ahron, featuring forty songs for the high holidays. Budapest c. 1893. M2187 G886 M4+. Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale
Grünzweig was choirmaster in Arad (then in Hungary, today in Romania), a center of the Jewish-liturgical reform movement in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Arad’s main synagogue had an organ since 1841. During the more than 40 years of his activity there, Grünzweig wrote numerous choir pieces that also met with much approval elsewhere.
Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei (‘All Vows’) for Cello, Harp, and Orchestra, the other score in the pop-up, is among the best-known compositions relating to Yom Kippur. In fact, as Floyd pointed out, the piece is so famous that it is often forgotten that Max Bruch (1838–1920), one of the most successful German composers in the nineteenth century, was a Protestant. Bruch was acquainted with Berlin’s cantor-in-chief Abraham Jacob Lichtenstein (1806-1880) and composed several pieces of music inspired by Jewish traditional melodies. Especially late in his life, however, Bruch increasingly embraced the widespread antisemitism of imperial Germany.
The oldest item on display was the Latin Ruskin Bible, created in England or Northern France in 1225. Dov Honick, a postdoctoral fellow who researches Jewish-Christian relations and biblical interpretation in medieval Europe, helped visitors use a magnifying glass to examine the delicate parchment pages, including an illumination of Jonah being consumed by the whale. The biblical book of Jonah is chanted by Jews in the afternoon service on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The book probably belonged to Christian owners in the medieval period, and points to the many biblical narratives shared between Jews and Christians, including the Jonah story.
Historiated initial at the beginning of the Book of Jonah. In Ruskin Bible. Copied in England or northern France, 1225–1250. Beinecke MS 387. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Several items related to the holidays of Sukkot, Hoshana Rabbah, Shmini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah. Rotem Avneri Meir, a postdoctoral scholar in Ancient Jewish History, showed visitors an 1823 edition of Antiquities of the Jews. The work, originally authored in Greek by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, appears in this edition in an English translation by William Whiston. It features an intricate illustration of the “Feast of Tabernacles,” in which a group of men build and decorate a Sukkah, the temporary booth or hut in which Jews traditionally eat or even sleep during the weeklong holiday of Sukkot.
Sukkah decoration. Copied possibly in18th-century Italy. MS Hebrew +100. Scholem Asch Collection. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale.
The Feast of Tabernacles is the only Jewish fall holiday prominently featured in Jospehus’s work. More contemporary examples of Sukkah decorations were on display at the exhibit as well. Tianruo Jiang, a doctoral candidate in rabbinics in the Religious Studies Department, showed visitors a large wooden decorative plaque from the Sholem Asch collection. The piece was possibly created in eighteenth-century Italy. In addition to the biblical phrase “you shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days” written in large Hebrew letters in the center, the plaque is also a beautiful example of micrography, an art form in which text copied in tiny script is used to create designs and images. Passages from Proverbs, the first book of Kings, and Zechariah are used throughout the item. Alongside this piece were photographs from a 2003 exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem of sukkot from around the world, including the distinct sukkot built by the Samaritan community. Unlike sukkot built by other communities, the ceilings of Samaritan sukkot consist of pomegranates, citrons, and other fruits related to the holiday and meant to evoke Eden.
Ruth Foster, a doctoral student who researches Jewish-Christian relations in the modern period, introduced visitors to two items from 1930s Jerusalem. One of them, utilized during the beginning of the fall holidays, on Rosh ha-Shanah, and the other during their end, on Simchat Torah. Ruth showed that the broadsheet depicting a pomegranate ‘Tree of Life’ offers warm new year greetings while the pomegranates on the tree contain blessings for the future: peace, health, prosperity, happiness and more.
Happy New Year’s Greetings Form. Jerusalem: S. Munzon, 1930s. Hebrew and Yiddish. 1998 Folio 14 14. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale.
The other item, a paper flag, depicts a dove rising above a sukkah declaring “be happy and rejoice on Simchat Torah.” Paper flags such as this one are known to have been created since the sixteenth century. Until today they and other small gifts such as sweets are given to children during the festival to encourage them to participate in the rejoicing and connect only positive things with the Torah. Unfortunately, only a few of these flags survived, as they are usually not preserved after the festival.
For Kunst, the pop-up exemplifies one of the main missions of a library: “to actively connect people with the cultural heritage it stewards and preserves on their behalf. This connection brings old materials back to life and provokes wonder, new ideas, and understanding of the complexity of cultures and human history.”
The pop-up exhibit was hosted by the Yale Program in Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by the Yale Chaplain’s Office, the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, Chabad at Yale, and Kehillah, the Jewish Graduate and Professional Student Association. It was followed by a reception, also hosted by the Yale Program in Jewish Studies, to welcome students, faculty and staff back to campus for the new academic year.