Jewish literature and artefacts to be available online

Feb 12, 2010, 15:16 GMT

Frankfurt - Thousands of Jewish books and cultural objects are to be placed online after a European project received 1.5 million euros (2 million dollars) of EU funding, Frankfurt's Goethe University announced on Friday.

The initiative, led by the London-based European Association for Jewish Culture, will be coordinated by Frankfurt's university library which holds one of the largest European collections of Jewish books and artefacts.

Institutions in Athens, Bologna, Budapest, Paris, Rome and Warsaw will also cooperate in the project, which aims to digitalize Jewish books, magazines, photographs and other cultural documents scattered across Europe.

The material is to be available online from the year 2011, for anyone with a personal or professional interest in Jewish history and culture, according to the project leaders.

Before World War II, Frankfurt Library already owned a large collection of Jewish books, most of which had been bequeathed by Jewish citizens.

The library now holds more than 20,000 Jewish books, collected from the middle of the 19th Century onwards. Many of these have been digitally captured in recent years.

The project, entitled Judaica Europeana, is also aimed at documenting the rebirth of Jewish life in Europe.

'In many European cities a lively Jewish life exists again, and in the last few decades there has been renewed interest in Jewish culture in Europe,' said Rachel Heuberger, who heads the Frankfurt collection.

Frankfurt university claims to hold Germany's largest accumulation of Judaica and Hebrew literature, and one of the most important collections worldwide.

(Internet: www.judaica-europeana.eu)