Inside the National Library of Israel. Photo: National Library of Israel.

JNS.org – The National Library of Israel (NLI) has launched a massive online database of centuries-old Jewish manuscripts from across the world.

The archive — known as Ktiv, Hebrew for “written word”– contains nearly 4.5 million images from 45,000 manuscripts, including prayer books, biblical texts, commentary, philosophy, literature and scientific writings in various Jewish-related languages such as Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic.

“To the best of my knowledge, this is unprecedented, not only for Jewish studies and Judaica,” NLI Director Aviad Stollman said, The Associated Press reported. “There is no project with this scope that aggregated so many manuscripts from so many places in the world.”

The database is a collaboration between NLI, the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society, the British Library, the Vatican Library and the Italy-based Palatina Library, in an effort to bring almost half of the world’s known volumes of Jewish manuscripts together in one location.