Since its founding in 1875 as the birthplace of Reform Judaism, the Hebrew Union College has been committed to building its library as an essential resource for its rabbinical and graduate students. It is now one of the most important collections of Judaica and Hebraica in the world. Did you know that the Klau Library on HUC’s Clifton campus is also open to the public for research and study?
The Klau Library is the holder of many distinctions, including being the first Jewish library in the world to have its own free-standing building, opened in 1931. Its collection includes more than 600,000 books in dozens of languages, an extensive collection of periodicals, more than 14,000 rare books, a rapidly growing collection of digital images from historic works and much more.
Each year, the Klau Library offers a wide variety of public in-person and virtual lectures and programs, the majority of them free. The library’s YouTube channel currently features more than 40 videos, many of interest to book artists and bibliophiles: the painstaking restoration of the earliest fully illustrated Haggadah printed in Prague in 1526, the recovery of a Viennese family of printers and booksellers’ collections stolen during the Holocaust, and the place of Hebrew books in the history of printing are just a few of them. Check out the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@huc-jirlibrary244/videos.
The Klau Library is just one of the unique library treasures in Cincinnati. Put a visit there on your calendar.
Above image is from https://huc.edu/libraries/cincinnati/
For more information: https://jewishlibraries.org/klau-library-huc-cincinnati/
