The Harry and Branka Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection is a rich resource for the study of the Jewish life and customs from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The early materials consist primarily of printed books, many of them illustrated, which were produced by both Jewish and non-Jewish authors and illustrators. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century works range from visual representations in a wide variety of modern, mass-produced genres, such as illustrated newspapers, postcards, and greeting cards, to limited edition books, a few drawings, and prints. Among the most moving and informative items in the collection are those that show marks of use such as signatures, inscriptions, hand-coloring, and wear and tear, having played an active part in the lives of their former owners.
The Sondheim Collection is particularly strong in representations of Jewish people at labor, in leisure, in the events of the Jewish life-cycle—birth, circumcision, naming, bar mitzvah, marriage, and death—and those of the Jewish calendar (Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Sukkot, and Passover). The collection also reflects their collector University of Chicago alumnus Harry Sondheim’s interest in particular illustrators and artists such as Bernard Picart, Ben Shahn, Moritz Oppenheim, Ephraim Lilien, Alfred Szyk, Alphonse Lévy, and François-Louis Schmied.
For more information on the Harry and Branka Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection, visit the digital exhibition, Images of Prayer, Politics and Everyday Life from the Harry and Branka Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection.
See also the preliminary inventory of the Harry B. and Branka J. Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection, which contains lithographs, book leaves, newspaper prints, reproductions and ritual objects documenting and illustrating various aspects of the Jewish religious year (e.g. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot); synagogue inaugurations and monuments and aspects of Jewish daily life and ceremonies in Europe and North America from the 18th to early 20th centuries. The collection has not yet been fully processed, but is open for research.