The following manuscripts and artifacts in the Price Library of Judaica are unique individual items. The library’s archival collections (personal papers and institutional records) are equally distinctive and listed separately on our “Archives” page. To read about the treasures selected to celebrate the library’s 40th anniversary, go to our online exhibition: 40 Years 40 Objects.

Peruvian Inquisition Document (1605): Titulos de las casas que compro el Senor Juan Osorio en Virtud de Sentencia del Tribunal de la Sancta Crusada que solia ser de Melchior de Palma e Ysabel Benavento su muger, Peru, 1650. The manuscript records the transfer of several houses to Juan Osorio, a judge of the Inquisition Court, following a ruling of the Tribunal of the Holy Crusade against their former owners, Melchior de Palma and his wife, Isabel Benavento. Targeted for their wealth, de Palma and Benavento exemplify the vulnerable communities caught in the Inquisition’s reach. The document offers insights into how Inquisitorial power was used to seize assets in early colonial Peru and its broader impact on Jewish converso refugees who had fled to the New World.

Yemenite Codex (1830): Yemenite Liturgical Manuscript, circa 1830. Written in Hebrew and Aramaic with Babylonian supralinear vocalization, this Yemenite liturgical codex contains qinot (lamentations), selichot (penitentiary hymns), and other hymns for the Ninth of Av and for mourners, including works by major medieval Spanish poets as well as texts preserved only in the old Baladi (local) Yemenite rite. Bound within the volume are Judaeo-Arabic astronomical writings and numerous other fragments, including a parchment leaf of Pirkei Avot hidden in the binding.

Argentinian Presentation Album (1910): La Colectividad Israelita al Ex Director de Inmigración Doctor Juan A. Alsina, Buenos Aires, 1910. This deluxe presentation album, offered by the Argentine Jewish community to Dr. Juan Antonio Alsina in 1910, contains 1,052 autograph signatures of Russian Jewish immigrants and features an elaborate brass cover and a richly symbolic allegorical watercolor celebrating Argentina’s promise of freedom and opportunity. Together, its artistry and inscriptions form a rare testament to the community’s gratitude toward Alsina at a moment of massive upheaval in Eastern European Jewish life.

Russian Torah Scroll (c. 1918): Purchased by Rae Price of Jacksonville in the late 1970s, this scroll was transported from Chicago to Florida and donated to the Beth Shalom Synagogue in memory of Isser Price. After the synagogue’s closure in 2011, their children, Eunice and Florence, transfered the scroll to the Price Library. The Machon Ot Institute identifies it as an early twentieth-century Russian scroll, its Ari script reflecting Hasidic influence.

Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) Scrapbook (1940s): Dominican Republic Settlement Association Anniversary Scrapbook and Photographs, 1941-1947. This scrapbook commemorates the 1st anniversary of the Jewish refugee settlement at Sosúa, Dominican Republic, in January 1940, documenting programs, invitations, menus, newspaper clippings, photographs, and a report by James N. Rosenberg on the settlement’s status, as well as a letter from Generalissimo Trujillo. Likely created by Alfred Wagg for Robert T. Pell, it preserves a rare record of early efforts to establish the settlement under the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) and the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees.

Diary from British Mandate Palestine (1940s): Diary and Letter of Yosef Hirsch, 1940-1945, Palestine, 1940-1945. Yosef Hirsch was a Romanian-born Jewish refugee who was interned at the Atlit detention camp after the British intercepted his illegal immigrant ship. Written in Hungarian and Hebrew, his diary records aspects of life in a British detention camp, as well as life in British Mandate Palestine after being resettled in Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk.

Raoul Wallenberg Document, Hungary (1944): Work Permit Issued to Andrew St. George by Raoul Wallenberg, December 1944. This fake work permit issued to Andrew St. George (András R. Szentgyörgyi) and signed by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, provided vital cover for clandestine rescue operations in Nazi-occupied Budapest. St. George, who only discovered his Jewish heritage in 1941, had first taken refuge in a monastery before joining Hungary’s anti-Nazi resistance. The fake permit enabled him to join Wallenberg’s underground network to save Hungarian Jews from deportation.