Chosen

The Rosenbach Museum is featuring a new display called Chosen. Below is the description. If you are looking for a way to spend a Sunday afternoon between services, just walk three blocks over on Delancey at 2008 Delancy Street.

Bringing together nearly 60 books, scrolls, and objects from public collections in the Philadelphia area that date from the 11th to the 18th century, Chosen tells the story of human experience, intellectual endeavors, religious tradition, and artistic innovation. These objects were selected for their literary and historic importance and their visual interest. By uniting them in a common space, Chosen reveals the untold stories buried within these objects, as well as those of their producers, owners, and the many different Jewish cultures and other influences that brought them into existence. Visitors can see highly decorated, illustrated scrolls; view writing in a diversity of languages from Chaldean to Yiddish; and learn how the form of Hebrew texts changed with the travels of Jewish populations across geography and time.

Some objects you can expect to see in the exhibition include:
the first known illustration depicting a bar mitzvah (18th century)
the oldest nearly complete Passover haggadah in existence (11 th century)
a Torah scroll listing 'the Eleven Commandments'
the oldest Hebrew Bible in North America (1266)
the first Hebrew prayer book written for popular use
the first known illustrations of Passover matzahs in manuscript and printed books
the first book written by a Muslim that was translated into Hebrew
the first printed prayer book printed in Hebrew
one of only six extant books bound in a Portuguese box-binding
the first Protestant translation of the Bible directly from Hebrew into Latin (1534-35)
the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Spanish (1553)
the first book published in what is now the United States (1640)
the first depiction of a map of the Exodus from Egypt (1695)
the first scientific illustration of a liquid-in-glass thermometer (1628-29)