In this project, prof. Ber-Levav studies the Jewish printed broadsheets from the beginning of print until the 19th century, building an international database for preserving and researching Jewish historical heritage. A broadsheet print is a page that was originally printed to remain on its own, not to be joined with other pages or folded. They are an expression of social and intellectual history that gives us a unique perspective on everyday Jewish life over the centuries, both as concerns the community and its relationship with the Christian surroundings.
Broadsheets are notoriously difficult to find and many have been lost, while others are hidden in libraries, archives, and collections, often without any special designation, or are simply uncatalogued. It is estimated that about 10,000 such single sheets are Jewish; by comparison, Christians have millions of them.
As part of a project, prof. Bar-Levav is searching for these sheets, collecting information about them, and studying them. One of the project’s challenges concerns how to use computational tools to organize the single sheets and tag both the sheets themselves and the information associated with them.
Broadsheets were composed in different languages and include wedding songs and ketubot, poems and riddles, wall calendars, amulets, educational material and community rulings. This project aims at offering a general perspective on Jewish broadsheets and fostering research on this genre of printing by gathering, cataloging, labeling and promoting numerous collections around the world.