Personal Libraries
The Library’s holdings are so very rich and varied because of the individuals who have generously donated their personal libraries to us in part or whole. This includes LBC lecturers, alumni and other rabbis and scholars and we are grateful to them and their families for their support. It is a deeply profound part of reading in the LBC library to find that the book now in your hands was once held by beloved and respected Jewish leaders and educators many of whom are listed below. This experience directly connects our students and researchers to their heritage, enabling them to take that inheritance forward to create the next chapter of living Judaism.
Rabbi Dr Ignaz Maybaum (1897-1976)
Dr Ellen Littman (1909-1975)
Rabbi Werner van der Zyl (1902-1984) Search Werner van der Zyl’s Library
Rabbi Richard Rosenthal (1929-1999)
Irene Bloomfield (1918-2001) Search Irene Bloomfield’s Library
Professor Dr Ben Segal (1912-2003) Search Ben Segal’s Library
Rabbi Dr Albert Friedlander (1927-2004) Search Albert Friedlander’s Library
Rabbi Dr John Rayner (1924-2005)
Rabbi Sheila Shulman (1936-2014) Search Sheila Shulman’s Library
Professor Dr Samuel Kraus (1866-1948)
Rabbi Dr Bruno Italiener (1881-1956)
Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck (1873-1956) Search Leo Baeck’s Library
Rabbi Dr Jacob J. Kokotek (1911-1981) Search Jacob Kokotek’s Library
Dr Jacob Jacobson (1888-1968) Search Jacob Jacobson’s Library
Student Rabbi Andreas Hinz (1965-2002) Search Andreas Hinz’s Library
Rabbi Lionel Blue (1930-2016)
Joshua Podro (1894-1962)
Joshua Podro was a distinguished scholar of Hebrew and Aramaic. His publications include Jesus in Rome: A Historical Conjecture with Rupert Graves, Nuremberg: Unholy City and The Last Pharisee: The Life and Times of Rabbi Joshua ben Hananyah a First Century Idealist. In 1989, his son Michael Podro (1931-2008) donated his father’s 5,000-volume library to the Leo Baeck College library. The collection includes books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on Central European Jewry but it’s breadth, from classic rabbinic texts to surveys of comparative religion, shows the wide range of Podro’s interests and research. The collection contains important and some rare items in all areas of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. With the exception of the rare books, the collection has been kept together on its original shelves. Search Joshua Podro’s Library
Bernard Cecil Gillinson (1910-1993)
Bernard Gillinson was a philanthropist based in Leeds active in Jewish communal and cultural affairs. The Gillinson Collection consists of a large number of pamphlets on Zionism and Jewish Emancipation. His books are integrated into the Main Library collection but bear his distinctive bookplate.