Home

The Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica, donated to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries in 2012 by the Kaplans, and growing each year, teaches us about the everyday lives, families, communal institutions, religious organizations, voluntary associations,  businesses, and political circumstances of Jewish life throughout the western hemisphere over four centuries.  It also provides a unique window into the changing character of colonial and early American life and culture in the United States.   It documents changing perceptions and experiences of new worlds of space and time, not only from the perspective of its Jewish citizens but also in the context of the larger societies in which they have lived.  The collection, in short, is more than the sum of its parts. It is the constellation of unlimited potential connections among its many pieces from the time of colonial settlement in the sixteenth century into the era of mass migration at the end of the 19^th century. More...