GO TO YIVO INSTITUTE HOME

Reorganizing the Strashun Rabbinic Collection

Feb 2, 2026

Library Highlight

Title page from Volume I of En Ya'akov: me'asef le-khol agadot u-midrashim ha-mefuzarim be-khol ha-shishah sedarim 'im p. Rashi ve-Tosafot ve-hidushe ha-Ramban. Vilna: Bi-defus Sh. Y. Fin ve-A. Ts. Rozenkrants, 1869-1874. Strashun Rabbinic Collection, YIVO Library.

For several weeks, the Library has been reorganizing the Strashun Rabbinic collection. Items in this collection have periodically been misshelved due to the complexity of its call number system: each book is labeled with a double vov, a number, and another Hebrew letter or two; usually, there is then another number and a date. You can see the ease with which one might accidentally misplace an item. One of the joys of this cleanup effort—beyond the satisfaction of seeing everything beautifully arranged!—has been finding misshelved items and having the opportunity to examine them closely. Items have included siddurim dating as far back as 1771 and a miniature set of the Babylonian Talmud. Equally fascinating are volumes from the 18th and 19th centuries stamped with personal names and annotated by the original readers. Each book we open emphasizes the fact that this collection contains not only sacred texts, but sacred history.