Hebrew manuscripts purchased from Mordecai & Ephraim Bisliches, and J. M. Goldberg

Hebrew manuscripts, 14th-19th century, mainly from a collection offered for sale by Berlin booksellers Mordecai and Ephraim Bisliches in 1850. The collection includes Talmud and Kabbalah texts, Biblical manuscripts, liturgies, and medical manuscripts.

Mordecai and Ephraim Bisliches were booksellers in Berlin. J.M. Goldberg was also a Berliner.

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card (for admissions procedures see http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk).

MSS. Michael Adds. 1-57 were bought from a collection offered for sale by Berlin booksellers Mordecai and Ephraim Bisliches in 1850. The sale catalogue by Leopold Zunz, entitled Ha-Palit, suggests that of the eighty manuscripts on sale, thirteen had been sold before the Bodleian purchase, or at any rate never reached the Library, while eight more, MSS. Michael Adds. 58-65, were purchased by the Library from H.M. Goldberg in 1851. Three more manuscripts, MSS. Michael Adds. 66-8, were purchased from Goldberg in 1853, and one unrelated manuscript, MS. Michael Adds. 69, from M. Steinschneider in 1855.

The series is probably unrelated to the collection of Heimann Joseph Michael (MSS. Michael).

Collection level description created by Susan Thomas, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts.

Brief descriptions are in Falconer Madan, et al., A summary catalogue of western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued in the Quarto series, with references to the oriental and other manuscripts (7 vols. in 8 [vol. II in 2 parts], Oxford, 1895-1953; reprinted, with corrections in vols. I and VII, Munich, 1980), vol. IV, nos. 24272-330.

The manuscripts are also summarily described in the card catalogue, arranged by language, located in the Oriental Reading Room.

All the manuscripts are catalogued in A. Neubauer and A.E. Cowley Catalogue of the Hebrew manuscripts in the Bodleian library, and in the College Libraries of Oxford, 2 vols., Catalogi Codd. MSS. Bibliothecae Bodleianae pars xii, (Oxford, 1886-1906), vol. 1. More recently, a 'Supplement of Addenda and Corrigenda', which has to be used in conjunction with Neubauer's Catalogue, was published (Oxford 1994).