Ritual und Ritus in österreichischen Einbandfragmenten – ein Forschungseinblick in das Projekt ‚Hebräische Fragmente in österreichischen Bibliotheken‘

Résumé

On several occasions, scholars have pointed out that parts of halakhic literature have survived only in a rather scattered way and that, consequently, the history of Jewish life and culture must be reconstructed from dispersed literary remnants. The Jewish elite across Europe, from the Ashkenazi Middle Ages and, with some interruptions in the early modern period, into the last generation before the Second World War, were constantly producing, consulting, collecting, and preserving Jewish literature of many kinds. The Hebräische Fragmente in Österreich data project (https://hebraica.at/Startseite/) was founded in 1991, and since 2008 has been directed by PD Dr. Martha Keil, senior scientist at the Institute of Austrian Historical Research at the University of Vienna and director of the Institute for Jewish History in Austria, St. Pölten. This project has provided online access to all the Austrian Hebrew fragments that have been preserved in book bindings. In this essay, I would like to report some of the achievements of this project and outline its future objectives and prospects.