Leo Baeck College Library, part of Leo Baeck College, contains 60,000 volumes exploring Jewish civilisation. The great texts of Jewish tradition are supported by traditional commentary, cutting-edge scholarship and reference works. Jewish history, thought, practice and culture are explored through professional, academic and popular literature. Texts come from across the religious spectrum, around the world and throughout Jewish history. Its archival holdings includes material relating to leading figures in British and Progressive Jewry, local history, Jewish life and culture.

Archive Description

The Library’s Archive Collections preserve sermons, lectures, eulogies, photographs and papers recording the thinking and practices of rabbis, scholars and teachers who have had an impact on British and Progressive Jewry. This includes Rabbis John Rayner, Israel Mattuck, Willy Wolff, Vivian Simmons, Bruno Italiener, and H.I. Bach, Samuel & Stephen Krauss, Irene Bloomfield and Cantor Samuel Alman. It also holds some of their personal libraries as well as those of Rabbis Leo Baeck, Albert Friedlander, Sheila Shulman, Lionel Blue and others.

The Leo Baeck College Audio Archive includes over 1200 recordings of lectures and seminars given at the college between 1985 and 2005. Delivered by rabbis, academics and professionals they present a fascinating picture of British Jewish life and learning. The Library holds the Victor Tunkel Jewish Music Collection which includes sheets music, musicology, cantor’s manuscripts, Tunkel’s papers and concert programmes.

Other Special Collections include rare books going back to the 16th century with a significant inheritance from the Hochshchule institute in Berlin along with other material that survived the Holocaust.

The collections contain more than 6000 pamphlets reflecting 150 years of European Jewish thought, and specialist collections in biblical commentary, Anglo-Jewry, liturgy, Progressive thought, Wissenschaft des Judentums and Jewish pedagogy.

Access Information

The archives are open to members of the general public through in-person appointments. Appointments are usually available Monday-Thursday 10am-4pm during the College’s teaching terms. No identification is required but appointments need to be made a few days in advance.

Online Accessiblity

An online catalogue is available but different archival collections have been catalogued to different levels. Item level cataloguing is available through the library catalogue and details about each collection is available on the Archive Collections pages. Online enquiries can be submitted by email at: library@lbc.ac.uk.

Digital Collections

Rabbi John Rayner’s Sermons and Lectures are available online as well as digital editions of the magazine, Manna: the Forum for Progressive Judaism.

Street Address

80 East End Road
London
N3 2SY