É. Apor (ed.): A Scheiber-könyvtár katalógusa / Catalogue of the Scheiber Library.

Menahem Schmelzer: Scheiber professzor szeretett könyvei

Preface In the March of 1985 we lost the legendary director of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary, Professor Alexander Scheiber. With his death, the last great figure of Hungarian Hebrew scholarship passed away. A scholar who had stature and international renown, who became a significant character in the fields of Jewish folklore, Genizah research, Hebrew epigraphy, bibliography, and not least literary history. And these represent only a few aspects of his multifarious activities. After Alexander Scheiber's death the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences felt obliged to buy the Hebraica-Judaica material of his famous and rich private library. We did this with two ends in view: to create a suitable reference library for the medieval codices of the Kaufmann Collection, and at the same time to make available for academic research a comprehensive and - in Hungary - unique collection of books and periodicals reflecting the results of modern Hebrew-Judaic studies. This was how our Scheiber Library was born. The books and periodicals together with Alexander Scheiber's correspondence came into the possession of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. These constitute the Scheiber Collection. The Scheiber Library is the personal library of an outstanding scholar, comprising the reference and research materials which formed the basis of his professional work. It contains essential specialised literature in the fields of Genizah research, Jewish folklore, Jewish history, mysticism, philosophy, bibliography, Jewish liturgy and linguistics. Of the more than five thousand items, numbering almost ten thousand volumes, approximately one third are in Hebrew, the greater part being written in the principal European languages. Particularly valuable are the several hundred Festschrifts which were prepared in the honour of such eminent figures as Nöldeke, Harkavy, Zunz, Yadin or Goitein. There are items of unique value relating to Hungary, too: publications on the history of the Rohonc Jews, the Debrecen Israelite Holy Brotherhood or the Stomfa community. The Rabbinical Seminary theses are likewise homogeneous materials which can be considered as rarity. The copious dedications, through which the personal magic of the former owner shines, constitute a particular charm of the Library. A greater part of the books are dedicated by their authors to the learned friend, to my dear Sanyi, to the director. Because of this popularity, several not entirely congruous publications also found their way into the collection, which, however, we did not want to exclude for reasons of respect. The predominant part of the Library's materials are unavailable in Hungary elsewhere, regardless of material offers. The same is true of the periodicals. The collection does not contain old museum pieces, being made up solely of publications from the second half of the