Prof. Moses Lutzki, renowned for deciphering and describing medieval Hebrew manuscripts died last Friday at the age of 81. Born in Russia, he received a Bachelor of Literature degree from Oxford University and in the late 1930s he joined the Bodleian Library at Oxford as a specialist in Hebrew manuscripts. Prof. Lutzki was known for having identified several manuscripts written by Maimonides.
He came to the U.S. in 1939 and became a cataloguer of Hebrew manuscripts for the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1940. In 1952, Prof. Lutzki was the first person to carry on a comprehensive cataloguing of extant Hebrew manuscripts for Columbia University’s department of Semitic languages. In 1969 he donated his 7000-volume private library to Yeshiva University’s Mendel Gottesman Library. Included were rare works of Hebraica and Judaica. He was professor of bibliography at Yeshiva for 20 years.
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