The largest collection of Hebraica and Judaica in Hungary, our University Library contains manuscripts and printed books from the fifteenth century onwards. Its archival function is to collect, preserve and process the cultural heritage and documents of the Hungarian Jewry, in general, and the Neolog community, in particular; and to make them available to our readers. At the same time, it also supports education and research at our university and serves the larger community interested in Jewish studies and Judaism in Hungary.
The foundations of the library of the newly established Rabbinical Seminary were laid down in 1877, when David Kaufmann, one of the first professors of the Rabbinical Seminary, purchased manuscripts and early prints of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the legacy of Lelio Della Torre, a former professor at the Padua seminary. Subsequently, the collections of several professors of the institute and the legacy of other rabbis in Hungary were also bequeathed to the library.
The library collection primarily covers the following fields: Hebrew and Jewish studies, biblical studies, Jewish history, Jews in Hungary, Christianity, Zionism and Holocaust studies. Of special importance are the Hebrew Manuscripts collection, a collection of Zionist booklets and an especially rich set of Hungarian Jewish periodicals. Since 2018, a series of grants have made it possible to systematically digitize rare items in the library: works by Hungarian Jewish scholars between the middle of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century such as Ignaz Goldziher, Wilhelm Bacher and David Kaufmann, publications by the alumni of the Rabbinical Seminary, as well as of books about local Jewish history.
Useful links:
- Website of the University Library (in Hungarian)
- English website of the Jewish Theological Seminary – University of Jewish Studies, Hungary (JTS–UJSH)
- Contact information and library hours
- Online catalogue (Aleph)
- Our manuscripts available in Ktiv: The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts (use the search code: BUD SEM).
- Digitized books from our library on the Europeana website and the Hungarian National Digital Archive