The Jewish studies collection at Columbia contains materials from the 10th to the 21st centuries, and from all over the world. Hebrew was taught at Columbia since its founding in 1754 and books about Hebrew language and Biblical studies were acquired from the university’s creation.  In 1892, with the help of professor Richard J. H. Gottheil, Chair of Rabbinic Literature and Semitic Languages at Columbia,Temple Emanu-El donated its impressive collection of 2,500 Jewish books and 45 manuscripts to the university. Many other important donations of personal papers and books followed, including Salo Baron’s purchase of some 700 manuscripts for the Libraries in the 1930s and the Oko-Gebhardt Spinoza Collection of nearly 4,000 books relating to Spinoza a couple of decades later.