Top of page
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division. In our era, when late-night satiric commentary on the day’s events from the likes of Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee or John Oliver constitutes a cutting-edge source of news for many Americans, or spoofs by the cast of “Saturday Night Live” influence …
Posted in: Collections, Jewish American History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Did you know that today is National Comic Book Day? To celebrate, we are sharing a contribution by Michael Cavna of the Washington Post to the September–October issue of LCM, the Library of Congress magazine. The entire issue, available here, showcases the Library’s collection of some 140,000 comic books. Cavna, an Eisner Award-nominated columnist and …
Posted in: Collections, Jewish American History, LCM
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
The Library’s collection of Yiddish American sheet music is an unusual one for the Library of Congress, mostly because of the way it came together: It started not with acquisition of materials that were then cataloged, but with a catalog. Lawrence Marwick retired as head of the Library’s Hebraic Section in 1980. Soon afterward, he …
Posted in: Collections, Jewish American History, Music
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Joan Nathan is the author of 11 cookbooks, including “King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World,” published in April. Her previous cookbook, “Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France” was named one of the 10 best cookbooks of 2010 by National Public Radio and Food …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Jewish American History, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Erin Allen
We wrap up our Letters About Literature series with the second tie-winning National Honor Award letter for Level 3 (grades 9-12). The national reading and writing program asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives. Winners for 2016 were announced …
Posted in: Books, Education, Jewish American History
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Sharon Horowitz, reference librarian in the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division.) Exodus 23:15 tells us that Passover should be celebrated in the spring. The rabbis understood this to mean it was their job to maintain the holiday in the spring, which required some manipulation …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Curators, Education, Events, Jewish American History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following post is by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) Every age has its own image of the “woman of valor,” and in the crumbling Jewish world of post-exilic Spain, that image was embodied in the persons of two unique women: Doña Gracia Nasi and Signora Benvenida …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Curators, History, Jewish American History, Manuscripts, Maps
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following post is by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) With its rich nature imagery and enigmatic dream-like sequences, the “Song of Songs” (also known as the “Songs of Solomon”) is surely one of the world’s great love poems and one of the most popular books in …
Posted in: Books, Collections, History, Jewish American History, Manuscripts, Poetry
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a post by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) Imagine that some brightly plumed bird-of-paradise has flown in amongst your backyard warblers, and you’ll probably know how I felt upon discovering a beautifully illustrated book in the vaults of the Library of Congress. Nestled between …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Curators, Events, Jewish American History