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Hannah Shumsky and Isaiah Weir, under the guidance of Dr. Joshua Teplitsky, studied the library of Rabbi David Oppenheim. Oppenheim was Chief Rabbi of Prague from 1703-1736, and his library is regarded as one of the most important collections of Jewish books of the Early Modern Period. This experience was supported by the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program.

Hannah Shumsky ('26) is a student in the College of Arts and Sciences pursuing a Pre-Med track. Read about her experience with research below!

I have been so grateful that my parents shared their love of travel with me. As we traveled, I have discovered a passion for medieval history. As I have gotten older, this fascination has become increasingly focused on medieval books and how studying books (including not just their content, but also their movement across time and space) can teach us about medieval cultures. Moreover, my dad’s family is Jewish, and I have always been curious about this background of mine. These academic and personal interests of mine were perfectly combined in this research project.

This project taught me a tremendous amount about the research process, especially with respect to preparing data for later analysis. We spent a significant amount of time entering data into a spreadsheet, doing what might be considered “busy work.” But this process was invaluable to our project. In fact, this process and the methodological considerations we put into creating our spreadsheet were what Isaiah and I ultimately ended up presenting research on, rather than the content of the collection.

One of the most important skills I have developed this summer is how to handle large amounts of data. The spreadsheet we built had upwards of 7,000 rows and roughly 35 columns. We had to decide how to organize data, what to include, how to indicate inconsistencies, and how to clean data, amongst other things. Knowing how to organize data and format it consistently sounds like an easy skill, but some of the choices took extensive conversations to figure out what to do. There were even times we chose to handle the data in one way, but later would realize there was a better way of doing it. In that case, we would need to redo it. Being comfortable with trial and error is extremely useful for just about any job, internship, or research position. Knowing how to be consistent with data and being able to manage it are critical skills, and they apply to any discipline and datasets of any size. - Hannah Shumsky

Isaiah Weir ('26) is also a student in the College of Arts and Sciences with an interest in history. Read about his research experience below!

I was originally drawn to this topic by the prospect of studying ideas, how they spread, and how they come together as seen through books. The project did not disappoint as we learned a lot about the patterns of publishing, the languages of Jewish books, and even how the size of books affected their audience. While we only added a small piece to this large field, it will allow both us and future scholars to better understand both the creation and spread of ideas in the Jewish community, and perhaps even by this, to better understand ideas across the world.

One central idea which consistently nuanced, improved, and even frustrated our research was the problem of bias in our sources. One of the problems with book history is that the books which survive tend to be the least used, as they take less damage. The most widely read books are usually lost to history. While we did not spend very much time working around this problem, David Oppenheim himself taught us an important lesson in this regard as he consistently collected works in Yiddish, the vernacular language of his community, both giving us a window into his broader community’s thought and showing that he paid attention to his people.

PURM was a great program to build friendships with both my fellow student and our mentor. It also ended up being a great opportunity for networking beyond the Penn community, as we worked with other book historians and librarians at Columbia, Pitt, Jewish Theological Seminary, and elsewhere. While this entire project was largely outside of my field of study, working with these scholars and thinkers helped me to grow generally, as a researcher, and as a reader, as we consistently learned to read texts carefully.

While I developed many skills this summer, from data analysis to deciphering Latin abbreviations, the one which stands out to me the most is reading Hebrew. I have so far learned very little of the language, but we learned to read the consonants such that we could transcribe them into a spreadsheet. While it was rather annoying to type up titles without any idea of what they mean, this allowed me to learn the first important skill of the language and made me very excited to continue studying. While I may or may not use Hebrew in a professional capacity, I want to continue studying this language, working towards reading knowledge and study of the literature.

Interested in reading more first-hand accounts about undergraduate research? Check out the other experiences featured on our Student News Page and Social Media!

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