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Warburg Mansion in New York Donated to Jewish Theological Seminary

January 26, 1944
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The fifty-room mansion in which the Warburg family made its home for many years has been donated by Mrs. Felix Warburg to the Jewish theological Seminary of America, and will be used to house the seminary’s collection of Jewish religious treasures, it was announced here today. Mrs. Warburg presented the structure in the names of her late husband, her father, Jacob H. Schiff and her brother, Mortimer L. Schiff.

Among the objects to go into the new museum are a thirteenth century Ark, one of the oldest pieces of ecclesiastical furniture in this country a fragment of the original Hebrew text of the last Book of Ecclesiasticus, a number of silver cases containing Scrolls of the Law, a Rembrandt etching of Manassah ben Israel, medieval tapestries, Hanukkah lamps, and spice boxes. There will also be exhibited the collection sent the seminary by the Jewish community of Danzig just before the German invasion of the city in September 1939.

“The gift,” Mrs. Warburg said, “is not intended as a specific memorial but rather as an affirmation of my faith in the fundamental principles of our traditions, which can be helpful and constructive in the problems of our world today, and also as attribute to the men of my family, my father, my husband, and my brother Mortimer, who each in his own way has done so much to build up the seminary toward its present effective usefulness.”

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