Moscow rabbi Yaakov Mazeh and his book collection

Location: Russian State Library, Centre of Oriental Literature, Exhibition Hall
Time: 21 March — 7 April 2018
Admission: free with a reader pass

As part of the long-awaited exhibition, Moscow rabbi Yaakov Mazeh and his book collection, the RSL Centre of Oriental Literature presented over eighty books and periodicals from the Mazeh collection, as well as books by Yaakov Mazeh from the RSL collections.

Leonid Pasternak. Portrait of Rabbi Yaakov Mazeh. 1925. Pencil, paper

Marina Melanyina, head of the Centre of Oriental Literature, and Yefim Ulitsky, curator of the exhibition, head of the artistic union «Yevreyskaya Starina Moskvy» (Jewish heritage of Moscow), came up with the concept back in 2016. The RSL Yaakov Mazeh’s collection includes about 3.5 thousand publications, with the most remarkable items chosen for the exposition.

Yaakov Mazeh (1859—1924) was a well-known Jewish public and political figure, lawyer, publicist, who served as the Moscow rabbi from 1893 to 1924. He was the owner of a large collection of books and periodicals in many languages, a significant part of which his daughter donated to the v. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR in November 1936. Currently, the Mazeh collection is stored in the RSL Centre of Oriental Literature and is available to readers and researchers. The collection includes books and periodicals of the 16th — early 20th centuries in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and other languages. These are classical texts of Judaism with commentary, treatises on Jewish religious law, research on the history and culture of Jewish people, fiction, academic and popular science literature.

Isaac Caro, Toldot Yitzchak. Riva di Trento, 1558. Commentary on the Pentateuch

During the opening ceremony, Adolf Solomonovich Shayevich, the Chief Rabbi of Moscow, called it «a ground-breaking event for Moscow» and thanked the administration of the Russian State Library for the opportunity to introduce the collection of «a great scholar, a great guardian of traditions» to wide audiences.

On behalf of the Russian State Library, Natalia Samoilenko, Deputy Director General of the Russian State Library for External Relations and Exhibition Activities, greeted the guests. Ms. Samoilenko spoke about another RSL collection, i.e., a collection of a Russian orientalist, writer and public figure, Baron David Günzburg. The digitisation of the handwritten part of the collection is now in full swing, and digitized documents are already available via the RSL Electronic Library .

The scholars and public figures who attended the opening talked about Yaakov Mazeh — about his personality, his work, and his contribution to the Jewish culture of Moscow in difficult for Jewish people times, i.e., after their eviction from Moscow in 1891, amidst the wave of anti-Semitism that followed the «Beilis Case», and in times of national unrest.

Album. M. Beilis Case. 1913

The exhibition featured over eighty books and periodicals from the Yaakov Mazeh collection stored at the Central Exhibition Hall, as well as books by Mazeh himself from the RSL main storage collections. The curator of the exhibition, Yefim Ulitsky, also provided several editions and copies of documents. Among the exhibits were editions of the Torah, Tanakh, Mishnah and Talmud, codes of Jewish law, and rare first editions of the works by Jewish scholars of the 16th-19th centuries. A separate section of the exhibition contained autographs and special inscriptions of famous religious leaders, public figures, scientists, writers and poets who donated their books to the respected Moscow rabbi. Many of the books in the Mazeh’s collection come with his handwritten notes and commentaries in Hebrew and Russian, illustrating his serious dedication to his books.

Toldos Yaakov Yosef. Lviv, 1858. A collection of Hasidic preaching with handwritten comments by Yaakov Mazeh on the bookends and on the inner cover of the binding

One of the sections of the exhibition displayed books in Russian, mainly devoted to the socio-political problems of Russian Jewry. Yaakov Mazeh was known as the defender of the rights of Russian Jews who fought against anti-Semitism . The exhibition included books from his collection that he referred to during the ‘Beilis Case’ (1913), in which Mazeh acted as an expert for the defence.

The Moscow rabbi took an active part in the turbulent events of the 1917—1920 s, which changed the country’s history. A special part of the exhibition was dedicated to very rare and hard to find books and periodicals that came out in the former Russian Empire during those years.

Yaakov Mazeh’s memoirs, Zikhronot. Tel Aviv, 1936