Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi (YYBZ)

• Ben Zvi Institute for the study of Jewish communities in the East

• Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Library and Photo Archives

• University

• National

The Ben-Zvi Institute of Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was founded by Izhak Ben-Zvi in 1947, for the purpose of studying documents, manuscripts and printed material relating to the history, communal life and culture of the Jewish communities under Islam and in other countries of the Middle East and Asia; for initiating and supporting research on these subjects; and for publishing monographs and texts reflecting the history and cultural activity of these communities.

The activities of the Institute are supported by the Center for Integration of the Oriental Jewish Heritage of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Library: New collections have been acquired over the years, including personal donations of academic scholars. Among these collections the library acquired the following collections: Yeshayahu Zana, Moshe Gaon, Moshe Pesach. In addition, the library purchased microfilms of further collections such as the Sasson collection from London, the Ginzburg collection from Leningrad and Yeshiva University. One of the most recent acquisition was made in 2004 when the library purchased documents of the Karaite community in Crimea, Ukraine. The library has been collaborating with other institutions in projects of digitisation. A Ketubba collection (Jewish wedding agreements) has been prepared in collaboration with the National Library and other libraries: http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/Hebrew/collections/jewish-collection/ketubbot.
The library has a large collection of historical photos and maps, gifts of many people. One of its main priorities is to microfilm or scan the remaining 600 manuscripts that have not been microfilmed yet. The The library welcomes further collaborations with other institutions in its wide-range activities.

The archives: the core collection of archival documents was transferred in the year 2000 to the Israel State Archives where the material has been catalogued. A copy of the catalogue is available at YBZ.

The image archive including photos, posters, pashkvil and maps remains in YBZ. It contains approximately 100,000 items. A digitisation project began in 2000.
Family photos album project begun in Tel Aviv in 2009 and was later expanded all over the country. Funded by the national heritage project “tamar” the collection already contains over 100,000 photos of which 7,000 are available online.

Entry prepared on November 2018.

Jerusalem historical libraries and archives revisited, Revised report prepared for Open Jerusalem, October 2014, Merav Mack https://www.ybz.org.il

Author : Open Jerusalem http://openjlem.hypotheses.org/