Judaica & Rosenbachiana

Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach formed a highly important collection of early American Judaica. He gave the bulk of this collection to the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS)  in 1931. Nonetheless, significant Judaica remain at the Rosenbach, including several Hebrew incunabula, the Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695 (the first with a map of the Exodus), and the first Hebrew grammar printed in the United States (1731). Correspondence in the Rosenbachiana collection documents family members’ participation in organizations ranging from Philadelphia’s Congregation Mikveh Israel to the AJHS and the American Friends of the Hebrew University.

The Rosenbachiana collection encompasses books written by or owned by Philip and A.S.W. Rosenbach, a limited amount of family materials, including papers and photographs, and the archives of the Rosenbach Company, which the brothers ran from 1903-1953. The archives’ stock files, purchase and sales records, correspondence, and financial records, supplemented by a collection of 13,000 book auction and bookseller catalogs, are an important resource for tracing the formation and dispersal of many important collections, and for the study of the American antiquarian book trade in the 20th century.