Fifty years later: The Cummings Collection of Hebraica and Judaica goes digital

The Cummings Collection of Hebraica and Judaica consists of over 33,000 volumes, mostly in Hebrew, and was acquired in 1963 upon the death of renowned book dealer Samuel Wahrman of Bamberger and Wahrman. The tale of its serendipitous acquisition, along with descriptions of some of its treasures, is recounted in UCLA Librarian in April(opens in a new tab) and September (opens in a new tab)1963.

A few years ago Dawn Aveline, former head of the Library Preservation Program, chanced upon this collection and initiated an extensive program to stabilize, rehouse, and digitize this collection which was touted as “one of the most impressive Hebraica collections in the world” by Arnold Band (Assistant Professor of Hebrew at UCLA) when he first discovered the collection was for sale over 50 years ago.¹ Since the digitization effort began in 2014 over 400 volumes have been uploaded and made full-text searchable on the Hathi Trust(opens in a new tab) and another 700 are currently being processed for upload. A lot of work remains to be done, but the preservation staff wanted to share some of the fun and interesting things we have encountered in working with this collection.

Material Evidence

In book history, material evidence refers to the copy-specific elements of a work such as binding, annotations, stamps, bookplates, etc. Material evidence provides clues to the history of that specific book - its use and provenance. This post will highlight a few of these traces, which were found while processing the images over the past year.

While we don’t usually applaud writing in library books, sometimes books come to us pre-doodled. Ironically, these notes, signatures, and doodles evolve into desirable elements over time and provide interesting glimpses into a book’s previous users.

Someone decided this(opens in a new tab) 1839 book was more useful as a sketch pad (the page featured at the top of this post is from the same book). Well, I say someone but the variations in style, writing instrument, and motif allow for the possibility that multiple persons used the front pages as a creative outlet. One can easily imagine bored school children over the course of 124 years doodling in class instead of paying attention to their instructor - some things never change.

This book printed in Livorno, Italy ends with a hand written list of names. The ע״ה at the beginning of each line is an abbreviation of “עָלָיו הַשָּׁלוֹם” meaning "peace be upon him", commonly used when referring to someone who has died. So, this is a list of people whom the owner of this book knew or more likely to whom they were related.

Someone wrote an entire paragraph at the end of this book. Sadly, Hebrew paleography skills are sorely lacking so I cannot translate what the paragraph says (yet). The signature in pencil underneath however is easily legible. “M. Gaster” refers to Moses Gaster, a 19^th and early 20^th-century linguist, scholar, and extremely influential Zionist, whose address we saw earlier. He was unsurprisingly an avid reader; many of the books in this collection bear his signature, as do books elsewhere such as the University of Manchester’s collection of Hebrew printed and manuscript books, and fragments from the Cairo Genizah, which it acquired after Dr. Gaster’s death in 1954.²

This(opens in a new tab) “Andachtsbuch für fromme Israelitinnen, mit deutscher Uebersetzung [Devotional book for devout Israelites with German translation]” created in 1846 in Sulzbach (Germany) has passed through a number of hands since its creation. At the top, we see someone named Jacob signed his name, likely as proof of ownership. Below, someone wrote a note in ink on Rosh Chodesh Sivan 1873 (May 27^th). Below that, in pencil, are a number of consecutive dates, all in the same or similar hand, listing the years ’85, ’86, ‘87, and ’88.

Header Image: Doodles of three human figures in various styles of dress.