Open Collections

[between 1900 and 1929]

1 bookplate : relief printing ; 8.4 x 10.8 cm

Baron de Hirsch Institute and Hebrew Benevolent Society

Still Image

The Baron de Hirsch Institute was founded in July 1863 as the Young Men's Hebrew Benevolent Society (YMHBS). Increased Jewish immigration in the 1880sput significant financial burdens on the YMHBS, so they requested assistance from the Austrian Baron Maurice de Hirsch, who gave them a substantial donation. In 1900, the YMHBS honored this donation and others from the Baron and Baroness de Hirsch by renaming the organization the Baron de Hirsch Institute and Young Men's Hebrew Benevolent Society. The Institute founded a variety of services to help recent immigrants and the Jewish community in Montreal more generally, and continues to this day as the Jewish Family Services of the Baron de Hirsch Institute. One of the services founded by the Baron de Hirsch Institute and Young Men's Hebrew Benevolent Society was a library. Created in 1900, the Library held a collection of Yiddish and Hebrew materials. The Library also held a book club. Many of these books went to the collection of the Jewish Public Library in 1914, though the Baron de Hirsch Library itself continued to exist until 1929. A copy of this ex libris is also available in the Philippe Masson Ex Libris Collection at McGill University.
References:
1) Annuaires Lovell de Montreal et sa banlieue (1842-1999). Bibliothèque et Archives nationales Québec. http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/lovell/
2) Margolis, Rebecca. Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Cultural Life in Montreal, 1905-1945. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011.
3) Lamonde, Yvan. Les Bibliothèques de Collectivités à Montréal (17e-19e siècle): sources et problèmes. Montréal: Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, 1979, 106.
4) 'Finding Aid to the Jewish Family Services/Baron de Hirsch Institute Fonds.' Jewish Public Library Archives. Montreal. http://www.jewishpubliclibrary.org/media/content/File/JFSBdeHI%20Fond.pdf
5) Miller, Evelyn. 'The History of the Montreal Jewish Public Library and Archives.' Canadian Archivist 2, 1 (1970), 49-55. http://journals.sfu.ca/archivar/index.php/ca/article/viewFile/13029/14268
6) The Philippe Masson Ex Libris Collection at McGill University, from http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/bookplates/

RBSC Bookplates

2013

Images provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from Rare Books and Special Collections: http://rbsc.library.ubc.ca

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