Hebrew University Library Gets Large N.Y. Collection of Jewish Music

Jacob Michael, noted American Jewish philanthropist, presented his collection of Jewish music — one of the largest in the world — to the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, it was announced here today.

The collection contains about 10,000 printed works and about 15,000 manuscripts of Jewish music, as well as literature on Jewish music. Included are religious music in Ashkenazic, Sephardic and Near Eastern versions, cantoral music, folksongs, Israeli music and thousands of hitherto unpublished East European cantoral manuscripts.

There are items from some 30 lands in which Jewish music was developed, especially in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, among them various European countries, the U.S., South America, North and South Africa, Yemen, Near Eastern countries and Israel. They include Hebrew and other Jewish songs from the U.S.S.R., prayer chants from Egypt, Morocco and Turkey, folksongs in Hebrew and Yiddish from Argentina and Brazil, thousands of works from Central, Western and Eastern Europe, and much musical literature from the U.S.

“The collection constitutes not only a considerable addition to the Jewish music collections of the library, where it will be available to all those interested in Jewish music, but also an important contribution to the work of the Hebrew University’s Jewish Music Research Center, where it will be of great assistance to the research workers investigating the history and development of Jewish music in recent centuries,” the announcement said.