In the state­ly exhi­bi­tion hall of New York City’s Groli­er Club, you’ll find a Bible from Tole­do, fin­ished by its scribe, Abra­ham Khalif, a mere four months before the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. The book made its way to Con­stan­tino­ple, where five years lat­er a sec­ond scribe, Hayy­im ibn Hayy­im, com­plet­ed the text’s Masoret­ic anno­ta­tions. A tes­ta­ment to dias­poric endurance, it’s one of the many remark­able arti­facts in Jew­ish Worlds Illu­mi­nat­ed: A Trea­sury of Hebrew Man­u­scripts from the JTS Library.

The exhib­it boasts over a hun­dred objects from the library of the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, whose hold­ings of Hebrew books and man­u­scripts is one of the largest in the world — but whose exhi­bi­tion space in uptown New York City is lim­it­ed to a few vit­rines. The Groli­er show is the largest exhi­bi­tion ever of the JTS’s col­lec­tion, span­ning some 800 years of Jew­ish his­to­ry. And the arti­facts on dis­play — chief among them prayer books, ketubot, Esther scrolls, and hag­gadot—tes­ti­fy to the ways dias­poric art absorbed its region’s cul­ture and motifs. Hence the title Jew­ish Worlds—plur­al.

The show is orga­nized geo­graph­i­cal­ly, not chrono­log­i­cal­ly, but you might as well start, as you would in Hebrew, with the first case at right, which con­tains the old­est arti­facts. They’re from the Cairo Genizah, a cache of 400,000 frag­ments that has been cen­tral to schol­ar­ship on sec­u­lar as well as reli­gious life. On dis­play here are a frag­ment of a ketubah almost 900 years old, an alpha­bet primer requir­ing stu­dents to trace the let­ters, a per­son­al let­ter from a trad­er to his wife that con­tin­ues diag­o­nal­ly in the mar­gins after run­ning out of room — let­ters from Judah Hale­vi also make the most of the page — and two let­ters from Mai­monides, one resolv­ing a dis­pute between a mohel and a doc­tor who per­formed a cir­cum­ci­sion for free. (Mai­monides sided with the mohel.) 

From there you might cross the gallery to Spain, and the famous and unfin­ished Pra­to Hag­gadah (c. 1300), open to a col­or­ful depic­tion of the wise son in a scholar’s robe and hood, on a page enhanced with gold leaf and bor­dered by a ser­pent-like drag­on. There be drag­ons in many of these works — along with human fig­ures, dis­prov­ing the old canard that Jew­ish art was ani­con­ic. Still, the female nudes in the Ital­ian works are sur­pris­ing and include a large image of a nude woman on an eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Esther scroll, and a ketub­bah from Man­tua illus­trat­ed with some of the Bible’s raci­er scenes — many of them extra­mar­i­tal, and in which women are the seduc­ers. Even more aston­ish­ing is the contract’s depic­tion of an anthro­po­mor­phized God, as one would see in Chris­t­ian art.

An Alsa­t­ian edi­tion of the Song of Songs is illus­trat­ed with the scene in Kings in which Solomon threat­ens to cut a child of dis­put­ed mater­ni­ty in two, a soldier’s sword poised above the baby. A hag­gadah from Italy by Ger­man artist Joel ben Sime­on — the rare hag­gadah where the artist is known — depicts faces in lit­tle squares, like postage stamps, sur­round­ing the first word of the Hebrew for ​“Let all who are hun­gry come and eat.” If you exam­ine the bor­der of a small eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Esther scroll from Ancona, Italy, you’ll see that its pea­cocks, goats, and foliage have been demar­cat­ed by paper­cuts, an ancient Chi­nese tech­nique tak­en up by arti­sans in Ancona and Lugo a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er. And in a Sefer Evronot, or Book of Inter­cal­cu­la­tions, from Ger­many, spin­ning dials used to cal­cu­late the Jew­ish cal­en­dar are accom­pa­nied by an illus­tra­tion of, of all things, an ele­phant — a visu­al pun for those who know the Hebrew word for ele­phant (“pil”). 

On the oth­er side of the gallery, the influ­ence of Islam is seen not just in archi­tec­tur­al arch­es but in iconog­ra­phy, sto­ry, and mate­ri­als. A ketubah is adorned with Persia’s nation­al sym­bols, the lion and sun — although the suns bear a remark­able resem­blance to Coney Island’s grin­ning mas­cot. An edi­tion of the Ardashir-nama (the Book of Ardashir, or Aha­suerus), a four­teenth cen­tu­ry epic poem by the Jew­ish poet Shahin, extends the Book of Esther in the man­ner of a Per­sian epic, telling the sto­ry of Arashir and Vashti’s son Shiru, who falls in love with a Chi­nese princess. And ​“car­pet pages” from Yemen, sec­tion dividers for a Bible, use tiny let­ter­ing to con­struct geo­met­ric pat­terns. Microg­ra­phy is employed in books on both sides of the aisle as well as in the mid­dle, where a medieval Bible from Ger­many is open to the Book of Job, the first word framed by a micro­graph­ic anno­ta­tion in the shape of a hunt­ing scene. 

In this cen­ter vit­rine you’ll also find one of the most cel­e­brat­ed trea­sures in the exhi­bi­tion: the first vol­ume of the Esslin­gen Mah­zor (the oth­er is in Ams­ter­dam), a mas­sive thir­teenth cen­tu­ry Goth­ic won­der, open to the ser­vice for the first day of Rosh Hashanah. It’s mov­ing to stand in front of it, as the can­tor would have — the con­gre­ga­tion behind him, with a view of the key words — and mar­vel at the per­se­ver­ance of tra­di­tion, over eight hun­dred new years later.

Jew­ish Worlds Illu­mi­nat­ed: A Trea­sury of Hebrew Man­u­scripts from The JTS Library runs through Decem­ber 27, 2025 at The Groli­er Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY For hours and select Sun­day open­ings vis­it www​.grolier​club​.org

Below are two addi­tion­al pieces that are on dis­play in the exhibit.