The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization is a vast and ongoing project launched over fifteen years ago by Felix Posen to gather literature, art, and translate primary sources from biblical times to the 21st century. The goal is to make this unprecedented collection, revealing Jewish creativity, diversity, and cultural contributions around the globe, easily available in English to all.
The selections of The Posen Library, curated by leading Jewish studies scholars, put readers directly in touch with the artist’s work across a vast range of genres: fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, religious and political writing, painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, unmediated by interpretation as would be the case in an encyclopedia.
The Posen Library is available online: The Posen Digital Library (PDL) is an interactive database, available free upon registration, so it is accessible around the world for all who read English. This free, living library is updated as each new volume of The Posen Library is completed.
The Posen Library is also available in print: ten beautifully illustrated volumes are being published and sold by Posen’s publishing partner, Yale University Press.
This ambitious undertaking is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Yale University Press and the Posen Foundation, which works internationally to support Jewish education. “Taken as a whole, the series will underscore the vitality and variety of Jewish culture–religious and secular, elite and popular,” says James E. Young, the project’s Founding Editor in Chief. “It will provide future generations with a working legacy by which to recover and comprehend Jewish culture and civilization.”
“Anthologizing can be seen as a quintessential Jewish practice because of the ways it extends Jewish conversations backward and forward in time,” says Deborah Dash Moore, the Editor in Chief of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. “Backward, since anthologizers must read and judge Jewish texts from previous eras, selecting some, rejecting others. And forward, because anthologizers seek to create new understandings that will shape the Jewish future, contributing to an ongoing dialogue. The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization thus participates in one of the oldest Jewish practices, harking back to biblical times.”
TITLES IN THE POSEN LIBRARY
From Biblical Times to the Present
Volume 1: Ancient Israel from Its Beginning through 332 BCE, edited by Jeffrey H. Tigay and Adele Berlin
Volume 2: Emerging Judaism, 332 BCE–600 CE, edited by Carol Bakhos
Volume 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam, 600–1200, edited by Arnold E. Franklin
Volume 4: Late Medieval Era, 1200–1500, edited by Jonathan S. Ray
Volume 5: Early Modern Era, 1500–1750, edited by Yosef Kaplan
Volume 6: Confronting Modernity, 1750–1880, edited by Elisheva Carlebach
Volume 7: National Renaissance and International Horizons, 1880–1918, edited by Israel Bartal and Kenneth B. Moss
Volume 8: Crisis and Creativity between World Wars, 1918–1939, edited by Todd M. Endelman and Zvi Gitelman
Volume 9: Catastrophe and Rebirth, 1939–1973, edited by Samuel D. Kassow and David G. Roskies
Volume 10: Late Twentieth Century, 1973–2005, edited by Deborah Dash Moore and Nurith Gertz
Video Overview of the Posen Digital Library (PDL)
The Genesis of the Posen Library
The Posen Library grew out of Felix Posen’s personal quest for Jewish knowledge and his foundation’s commitment to education. The idea first began to take shape in the late 1990s, when Posen, who was born in Berlin but lived in London for decades, retired from business and decided to devote himself to foundation work, with an emphasis on Jewish history, culture, and ideas. Many Jews believe that apart from religious texts and observance, Judaism has little to offer,
Posen says. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
Raised Orthodox, Posen spent decades drifting from the Judaism he learned as a child and abandoned as a young adult. Having found his way back to Jewish life, he reasoned that others, given the chance, might do the same. The key was a different kind of education than he—and most Jewish students—received.
The main obstacle, he thought, was a lack of good literature about Jewish history and ideas. I was frustrated,
Posen says. Even the renowned Encyclopaedia Judaica contained some serious gaps.
To be an educated Jew, he believed, one needs good resources. There was no single source,
he recalls, so I decided to create my own anthology.
As he conceived it, The Posen Library would include most of the important Jewish texts, artifacts, and works of art ever produced. With its enormous breadth, it would provide a panoramic view of Jewish culture, both religious and secular, through the ages. Posen consulted two senior Israeli scholars. The first step, they suggested, would be to assemble an elite advisory council, with scholars from around the world. Posen helped select the members. I wanted a balance between men and women, Americans and Israelis, religious and seculars,
Posen says.
In 2003, and again in 2005, members of the advisory group, the appointed volume editors, and representatives from Yale University Press convened in London. Among them was James Young, a respected scholar of the Holocaust and its memorialization. Despite being somewhat humbled by the audacity of the project, Young accepted the role of Editor in Chief. In time, over 120 academics would join the project as editors and advisors.
In 2008, when the editors and advisors reconvened again in London, an exciting new idea was presented: Yale University Press was prepared to begin scanning and digitizing The Posen Library so the contents, including paintings and illuminated manuscripts, would someday be available online. This would turn the hardcover volumes into a living anthology that could be updated, annotated, and accessed by people around the world. Music, theater, film and TV, impossible to include in book or codex form, could now be included.
At Posen’s suggestion, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz and his daughter, the historian Fania Oz-Salzberger, agreed to contribute a companion volume, Jews and Words. The pair’s first collaborative writing effort would be a fitting tribute to the project.
Fourteen years after Felix Posen conceived The Posen Library, Volume 10: 1973-2005 was completed. As of 2019, Volume 6: 1750-1880 is also available and The Posen Library will release two more volumes in 2020. The Posen Library was initiated as the solution to a problem: a lack of educational resources in Jewish history and civilization. But it has become something more: a catalogue of Jewish creativity, something that will reward a reader’s curiosity and offer a casual reader the thrill of discovery. It will be an incentive for Jews, as Posen once put it, to not abandon the very worthy age-old Jewish custom of learning.
Text permissions for The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization are secured by Melissa Flamson and her research team at With Permission, http://www.with-permission.com.
