Ambassador of the State of Israel paid a visit to our Library

On November 4, 2015, Ilan Mor, Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the State of Israel paid a visit to National Széchényi Library where he discussed the possibilities of cultural cooperation with Director-General of NSZL László Tüske. After the meeting, the Ambassador had a look at of some of the special pieces of our collections.

In the Apponyi Room of the Library, Head of the Early Printed Books Archive Gábor Farkas Farkas showed the Ambassador the well-preserved copy of Chronica Hungarorum, which is the first book printed in Hungary: printed on June 5, 1473 by András Hess in Buda.

Hebraist Balázs Tamási, who works for NSZL’s Collection of Historical Interviews, showed the visitor two Hebrew manuscripts kept in the Manuscript Collection of National Széchényi Library. One of them was a rare and late sample of 14th-century Lower Austrian book culture, a manuscript of Sefer Mordechai (1372-73), richly illustrated with gold leaf. This manuscript preserved, among others, the visit Henry III, King of France and Poland had paid to Frankfurt Synagogue while on his way to Poland. The other piece shown to the Ambassador was the micrographic manuscript, finished in 1749 by Aaron Wolf Herlingen, the imperial librarian and scribe of Vienna, which contains the so-called Five Scrolls written in miniature Hebrew and Latin handwriting on a quarter-sized folio. The third rare item presented to our guest was the 1629 illustrated edition of Venice Haggada, which also contains the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) translation of the Hebrew text, and which, in its rich motifs of illustration, reflects the three (German, Spanish and Italian) origins of the Jewish community in Venice.

György Danku, staff member of NSZL’s Map Collection presented to Ilan Mor, among others, maps of the Holy Land, a major influential version of early modern-age Jerusalem maps, and one of the earliest Hungarian-lanugage maps published in Hungary about the State of Israel.

Image report about the visit