Collections

This collection contains subject records and materials generated by the Office of Marketing and Communications at the University of Hartford.

The collection consists of sixteen Oxyrhynchus Papyri items. The most notable item (Oxy. P. 1230) relates to the New Testament text of Revelations 5,6. Other items include poetical and prose fragments, orders, contracts, receipts, letters, and a prayer.

Collection of 55 Chinese and Japanese facsimile scrolls (total of 37 works), full-size and miniature format handscrolls and hanging scrolls. Each scroll is identified and labeled in English, some have accompanying information leaflets. Each scroll has been assigned an identification number. From various sources including purchases, gifts, and transfers from Yale University Art Gallery Print Room. No further documentation found.

Abraham Jehiel Feldman, born in 1893 in Kiev, was one of the leading Reform rabbis in the country. He came to the New York in 1906 and received his ordination in 1918 from Hebrew Union College. He was invited to return to New York where he served for almost two years under Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Following that, Feldman became the assistant of Joseph Krauskopf for five years at his congregation in Philadelphia. In an oral history recorded in 1974, Rabbi Feldman commented on the influences he received from serving under two extremely prominent rabbis who were so different in approach. From Wise, he learned to use the pulpit as a "completely free forum" to espouse his views without control from the congregation. Under Krauskopf, he learned skills for building and maintaining a congregation. Feldman was selected in 1925 to lead at Beth Israel in Hartford. From his boyhood, Feldman was an ardent Zionist, and he spoke out on the matter from the Beth Israel pulpit to his decidedly non-Zionist congregation. During the next few decades, Feldman was unable to convert many of his congregants to Zionism, but he did neutralize opinion and prevent them from joining anti-Zionist groups. He also played a leading role in changing the general attitude among Reform leaders nationally. Feldman acquired a national reputation as a major leader of Reform Judaism and served on the Board of the Hebrew Union College, the Executive Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and as President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He retired in 1968 but continued serving as Rabbi Emeritus until his death in 1977. Rabbi Feldman was also very active in the local secular community. He served as Chaplain to the Connecticut State Guard, the Connecticut State Police, and the Veterans' Hospital. Feldman was involved with various other governmental agencies including the local Selective Service Re-employment Board, the National Recovery Administration in Connecticut, and Department of Defense post-war missions to the Pacific Rim. He was active in inter-faith activities that included the Connecticut Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, lectures at the Hartford Seminary, and the founding of the Hartford Inter-Faith Committee. Rabbi Feldman was a prolific writer of numerous books and articles. He also co-founded the Jewish Ledger in 1929 and edited it for 48 years. In addition, Feldman was a member of the Publications Committee of the Jewish Publication Society, on the Executive Board of the Jewish Book Council of America, and a contributing editor of several Jewish encyclopedias. This is far too small a collection to provide an in-depth look at Rabbi Feldman's life and profession, but, together with material in the Beth Israel Collection, it provides insight into his relationship with the non-Jewish community.

Collection of photographs and slides of Chinese art consisting of the following sub-collections: (702-1) Chinese Painting Photograph Collection (Research Files), (702-2) Moore Photograph Collection of Oriental Art, (702-3) Ellsworth Collection of Chinese Painting, 1800-1950; (702-4) Cahill Photograph Collection, (702-5) National Palace Museum Photographs, (702-6) Chinese Painting Photographs (Barnhart Requests), (702-7) C.C. Wang Family Collection, NY; (702-8) Hangchow (Hangzhou) Album, (702-9) Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice (Yale University Art Gallery, Exhibition), (702-10) To See Big Within Small (Yale University Art Gallery, Exhibition), (702-11) Traces of the Brush (Yale University Art Gallery, Exhibition), (702-12) Ch'u Silk Manuscript (25 slides) from Sackler Collections with notes by Noel Barnard, (702-13) Chinese art from various collections (5 slides). Identifying information given in English and/or Chinese on photographs, folders and/or identification lists. See individual sub-collection information sheets for further information.

An artificial collection of correspondence, manuscripts, volumes, and miscellanea relating to France, 1115-1941.

A collection of approximately 400 manuscript items, including letters; letterbooks; copies of statutes, pleadings, opinions and precedents; King's Bench reports; abridgments and commonplace books of cases; and other papers, documenting the development and practice of English law and the evolution of the English legal system from the thirteenth into the twentieth century. Included are an early copy of Henry de Bracton's De legibus Anglie; a fourteenth-century pocket compilation of "Statuta vetera" that opens with a copy of the Magna Carta; case reports from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries; letters, opinions and notes by a range of English legal figures, including William Blackstone, Edward Coke, Edward Law, Lord Thurlow, and Francis Wedderburn; and guides to court proceedings and practice from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Osborn Manuscript Files contain single, unbound manuscripts and small groups of manuscripts acquired for the Osborn Collection from various sources at various times.