Metadata: I. I. Gintsburg
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Holding institution (official language):
- Институт восточных рукописей Российской Академии наук
- Postal address:
- 191186, St. Petersburg, Dvortsovaia nab., d. 18
- Phone number:
- (812) 315-87-28
- Web address:
- http://www.orientalstudies.ru
- Email:
- iom@orientaistudies.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 79
- Title:
- I. I. Gintsburg
- Title (official language):
- Гинцбург И. И.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Gintsburg, Iona Iosifovich
- Date(s):
- 1898/1941
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Arabic
- Extent:
- 44 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds contains a large collection of materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture that may be provisionally divided into three thematic groups:
1) Personal documents related to the professional and public activities of I. I. Gintsburg, including an autobiographical statement and questionnaire form (1927-36); copies of his birth certificate (1898-1928), residence permit for admission to the university (1901) and marriage certificate drawn up by the Odessa city rabbi (1908); originals and copies of passports (1902); a copy of a permit granted by the St. Petersburg city prefect entitling the Jew I. O. Ravrebe to reside in I. I. Gintsburg’s home as a domestic servant (1909); documents pertaining to the hiring of I. I. Gintsburg at various research institutions, in particular, a copy of a recommendation by A. V. Lunacharskii (1913-1929); a list of scholarly works by I. I. Gintsburg (1941); materials pertaining to I. I. Gintsburg’s pedagogical activities, including minutes of sessions of the pedagogical council of the Oriental Studies Courses established by Baron D. G. Gintsburg that include discussion of the issue of amending this institution’s charter to reorganise it as the Jewish Studies Institute and a draft budget of the institute for its first academic year (1911); a report of the commission on the Institute of Higher Jewish Studies; minutes of the commission’s meetings at which the school’s founding and the curricula of its history and philology departments were discussed (1917); etc.; documents pertaining to the public activities of I. I. Gintsburg, including printed copies of official appeals, in particular, on behalf of the Petrograd Jewish community and the Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims (EKOPO); an invitation to a jubilee celebration of Abraham Harkavy; etc. (1914); an address in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia (OPE) (1913); photographs; etc.
2) Manuscripts and authorized typescripts of works by I. I. Gintsburg, including unpublished ones, among them the reports: “The Worldview of Jewish Rationalists of the Middle Ages”, and I. I. Gintsburg’s responses to evaluations of this report by P. K. Kokovtsov, N. N. Sokolov, P. V. Tikhomirov, and V. V. Struve (undated); “Coordinative and Subordinate Conjunctions in Semitic Languages” (1932); “Arabic Medicine and Avicenna’s The Canon Of Medicine and Urjuza, According to Hebrew Manuscripts of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences” (c. 1937); “The Chronicle of David Lekhno. A History of the Crimean Khanate” (1941); “Arabic and Hebrew Versions of a Philosophical Composition of Daud Ibn Mervan al-Muqammis” (9th-10th c.) (1926); “Pathways to the Origins of Spinozism (Maimonides and Spinoza)”, “Pantheism and Monotheism (from Moses to Spinoza)”, and particular sections from a work on Maimonides (undated); "Totemism and Language in Light of the New Teaching on Languages (Japhetology)” (undated); a description of the Karaite manuscript “Zmirot shel kol ha-Shana” (“Hymns for the Whole Year Round”), etc.; a catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1,609 titles) constituting a typewritten text with handwritten insertions by the author, and differing from the published version both in its manuscript description system and the brevity of information given about the manuscripts (c. 1936); a typescript titled “Hebrew-Persian and Karaite Fragments”, with corrections and additions (undated); etc.
3) Materials used by I. I. Gintsburg in preparing his scholarly works, including excerpts, notes and bibliographic notations, in particular, extracts from a poetic paraphrase titled “The Song of the Vineyard” (Isaiah 5), with a Russian translation and commentary (undated); and from a work titled "A History of Jewish Philosophy of the Middle Ages” (undated); notes on biblical language (undated); individual and fragmentary handwritten sheets; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Iona Iosifovich (Osipovich) Gintsburg (1871-1942) was an Orientalist, Semitics scholar and Arabist and Hebraist. He received a traditional Jewish education. In 1889, he passed examinations for the secondary school [gimnaziia] curriculum without having attended classes. In 1901, he entered the department of Oriental languages of St. Petersburg University (he was enrolled in excess of the two-percent quota at the request of the professors who conducted the interview). He graduated from the university with a 1st-class diploma in 1905, but due to the opposition of Prof. P. K. Kokovtsov, he did not remain at the university to prepare for the professorship. From 1906, he served as secretary (and later, manager) of the business board of the St. Petersburg Jewish community, and taught privately. In 1908, he was involved in the creation of Baron D. G. Gintsburg’s Oriental studies courses; here from 1909-13, he taught Arabic, Aramaic and the history of Arabic-Jewish philosophy. From 1918-20, he was secretary of the council of the Jewish community of Petrograd and was actively involved in operations of the Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims (EKOPO). In 1923, he took part in establishing the Petrograd/Leningrad Jewish religious community and served as its secretary until its liquidation in 1929. In February 1919, the Higher Courses in Oriental Studies were used as the basis to establish the Petrograd Jewish University. At this institution, renamed the Institute of Higher Jewish Studies in the fall of 1920, I. I. Gintsburg taught Arabic and conducted a seminar on Arabic-Jewish medieval philosophy. When the institute was closed in 1925, he continued his research activities in the fields of medieval Arabic-Jewish philosophy and Semitic linguistics. In 1927, he submitted his dissertation “On the Worldview of Medieval Jewish Rationalists” to the Research Institute of the Comparative History of the Literature and Languages of the West and East (ILIaZV), for which he received a degree. From 1928 on, he was an adjunct, and from 1931 to 1934 a full-time researcher at ILIaZV. In this period he also worked at the State Institute of Speech Culture (GIRK) and the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1935, he became a candidate in literary studies; he would prepare a doctoral dissertation, but was unable to defend it due to the outbreak of war. Over the course of five years, from 1936 to 1941, he prepared a systematic description of manuscripts of the Hebrew fonds of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, publishing a “Brief Survey” thereof in the book Bibliography of the Orient (Moscow, 1936, no. 10). The full version of the description was published after his death as A Catalog of Jewish Manuscripts in the Institute of Oriental Studies (New York, Paris, 2003). I. I. Gintsburg’s scholarly works included “Arabic and Hebrew Versions of a Philosophical Composition of al-Muqammis, 9th-10th c.” (Notes of the Collegium of Orientalists, nos. 4-5, 1930); “A Manuscript Hebrew version of al-Ghazali's Mizan al-amal” (Notes of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, no. 6, 1937); “Arabic Medicine and Avicenna’s The Canon Of Medicine and Urjuza, According to Hebrew Manuscripts of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences” (Proceedings of the Second Session of the Arabists’ Association, October 19-23, 1937, USSR Academy of Sciences; Moscow, Leningrad, 1941).
The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IVR RAN) is a research institute in the Academy of Sciences system. Its operations are focused mainly on the comprehensive study of landmarks of the literature of the East, as well as of the ancient and medieval history of the countries of Asia and North Africa. The fonds of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts currently contain a significant collection of Jewish materials reflecting both the rabbinical and Karaite traditions: approximately 50,000 printed books in Hebrew (including 66 incunabula and approximately 300 paleotypes); about 10,000 printed books in Yiddish; over 1,700 manuscripts (among them, 1,217 codices and 79 scrolls), not counting a great number of fragments; and about 5,000 copies of Jewish newspapers (published before 1917). The Hebrew fonds was formed during the 19th and 20th centuries from the private collections of L F Friedland, D A Khvol’son, D G Maggid, V V Radlov, E Ross, P K Kokovtsov and other collectors, mandatory copies of all books printed in the territory of the Russian Empire and books expropriated after the October Revolution from synagogues and Jewish schools. Some of the publications were acquired as ‘trophies’ of the Second World War.
- Access points: locations:
- Russia
- Subject terms:
- Aid and relief
- Education
- Education--Schools and universities
- Jewish languages
- Jewish languages--Hebrew
- Karaite Judaism
- Literature
- Manuscripts
- Passports and visas
- Personal records
- Photographs
- Professions
- Professions--Scholars (secular), scientists, and academics
- Vital records
- Vital records--Birth records
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises a single series arranged by structure.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
