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Category: Hebraic Section

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Her Magazine, Her Voice: Foremothers of Women’s Journals in Africa and the Middle East

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

(The following is a joint post by Angel Batiste, Ann Brener, Anchi Hoh, and Fawzi Tadros in the African and Middle Eastern Division.) The history of women in Africa and the Middle East has often been told as addenda to incessant wars, political turmoil, and social injustice. If women’s voices could be heard, what story …

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Love Songs from the Middle East: A Valentine’s Day Celebrated with Poems from the Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish Collections

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

Poetry was the theme of a special program, “Love Songs from the Middle East: A Valentine’s Day Extravaganza with Poems from the Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish,” held in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room of the Library of Congress. Through dramatic readings, the division’s very own area specialists journeyed with their audience …

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Princess Tanya Comes to Washington: A Chanukah Story for the Library of Congress

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

(The following is a post by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) This Chanukah, it will be exactly one hundred years since a Jewish artist in revolution-torn Moscow presented his young stepdaughter, Tanya, with a wonderful Chanukah gift: a hand-lettered Russian fairytale in which the little girl herself …

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The Rivers Sing to the Emperor: A Hebrew Poem of Victory for Joseph II

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

(The following is a post by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) The occasion was apparently too good to miss. After a 3-week siege that ended on October 8, 1789, the armies of Joseph II, Emperor of Habsburg Austria, wrested the stronghold of Belgrade from Ottoman hands and …

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An Ingathering of the Exiles, Digital Style: Previous Blogs from the Hebraic Section

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

The Hebraic Section is delighted to take part in the recently-launched “4 Corners of the World,” a blog that focuses on the Library of Congress’ international collections. Thanks to this wonderful web-initiative we will now be able to bring treasures from the Hebraic Section to the attention of the wider public and, indeed, have already …

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A Haggadah with a Chinese Touch

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

On the shelves of the Hebraic rare book collection, housed in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division, sits a Haggadah published in Amsterdam in 1781, by the Widow and Sons of Jacob Proops, a very well-established Hebrew printing press. According to Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist, this Haggadah is listed in two classic bibliographies: …

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Book as Microcosm: A Unique Hebrew Copy of Ibn Sina’s Canon

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

(The following is a post by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) The book is bound in dark brown leather over wooden boards, its tooled surface rubbed smooth with age. Its envelope-style binding, common to works in the Muslim world, is highly unusual in the world of Hebrew …