How to understand ‘al yede? Title pages of Hebrew private library catalogues printed in the Dutch Republic during the long eighteenth century

Abstract

As a first step towards more research in the field of Jewish private libraries and Hebrew auction catalogues, this zuta focuses on the understudied corpus of 18th-century Hebrew book sales catalogues printed in the Dutch Republic. It is not always clear if these 18th-century catalogues contain collections from private libraries or retail stocks of publishers, printers, or booksellers. In this article I will analyse and compare the title pages of several catalogues, in order to understand the meaning of the phrase ʿal yede in relation to ownership of the catalogued collections.