Activities of the Friends
 

Winter Reception. A reception held on the afternoon of March 4,
attended by Friends and their guests, opened the exhibition,
"Jewish Literature through the Ages." The more than one hundred
manuscripts and early printed books on view featured a cuneiform
tablet dating from the age of Abraham, a ninth-century fragment of
the Book of Genesis, several illustrated Ketubot (marriage con¬
tracts) dating from the eighteenth century, and early manuscripts
relating to biblical and talmudic commentary, legal codes and
responsa, Midrash, history, liturgy, philosophy, theology, mysti¬
cism, poetry, grammar, science, and communal records; all of the
rarities on view were drawn from the Rare Book and Manuscript
Library's holdings of twenty-eight incunabula, three hundred
sixteenth-century books, and more than one thousand manuscripts
in Hebrew and a variety of European languages, many of which
were the gift of Temple Emanu-EI in 1892. The exhibition will
remain on view through July 17.

Bancroft Awards Dinner. The annual Bancroft Awards Dinner, held
on Wednesday evening, April 1, in the Rotunda of Low Memorial
Library, at which the Chairman of the Friends Frank S. Streeter
presided, honored the winners of the 1992 awards for distinguished
books in American history and diplomacy published in 1991:
William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West,
W W. Norton & Co.; and Charles Royster, The Destructive War:
William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans,
Alfred A. Knopf President Michael I. Sovern presented to the
author of each book a $4,000 award frora funds provided by the
Edgar A. and Frederic Bancroft Foundation; Mr. Streeter presented
citations to the publishers.

Future Meetings. The fall exhibition reception will be held on
Wednesday afternoon, December 2; the winter reception will be
held on March 3, 1993; and the Bancroft Awards Dinner is sched¬
uled for April 7, 1993.
 

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