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 in print, as well as online as a free upon registration interactive database, 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.
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.”
Of the ten titles included in the Posen Library, volumes 1, 5, 6,7, 8, 9 and 10 have already been published.
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