Yom Kippur through the centuries: The prayer books that preserve centuries of Jewish history

Dr. Chaim Neria, curator at the National Library of Israel, presents Yom Kippur artifacts from the collection, including a WWII soldier's prayer book, a Cairo Genizah fragment, and the Lisbon Mahzor, illustrating centuries of Jewish liturgical history.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Dr. Chaim Neria, curator of the Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel, shares a selection of Yom Kippur-related artifacts from the library's archive. The collection includes a two-volume Yiddish and Hebrew prayer book printed in New York in 1942, donated in memory of David Meyer Wald, an American Jewish soldier who fell on Yom Kippur 1944 while fighting with the 82nd Airborne Division in Holland. NLI researchers pieced together Wald's biography and discovered a Torah scroll dedicated in his memory. Another treasure is a fragment from the Cairo Genizah, written in the late 11th or early 12th century by scribe Hillel Ben-Eli, containing a piyut by Rabbi Eliezer Kalir. The fragment is one of the oldest Yom Kippur prayer books in existence. Neria also discusses the Lisbon Mahzor, produced after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. The article frames these artifacts as connecting modern readers to centuries of Jewish liturgical tradition.