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Israel has long sought the transfer to its
national library of the 14,000-item Guenzburg collection in the
Russian State Library in Moscow, and the digitization compromise
effectively shelves a century-old ownership dispute.
The collection includes medieval books, rare works of Jewish
ritual law and mysticism, prayer books and biblical commentaries
amassed by three generations of the Russian-Jewish Guenzburg
family.
It was purchased by Zionist activists in 1917 for shipment to
Jerusalem that was delayed by fighting during World War One and
was ultimately seized by Soviet authorities after the Russian
Revolution.
Under what the National Library of Israel described in a
statement as "an historic agreement" with the Russian State
Library, thousands of "new high quality images" of the ancient
Hebrew texts will be integrated into the Israeli institution's
online Ktiv manuscript site. (http://web.nli.org.il/sites/
NLIS/en/ManuScript/)
(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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