This inventory provides a survey of the extant Yiddish sources in Dutch archives and collections outside of Amsterdam. Until now, an overview and quantitative summary of the available Yiddish sources in The Netherlands was lacking. The compilation represents only a modest beginning, for the amount of material that has survived is enormous. An inventory relating to the Jewish community of Amsterdam requires a separate volume. The present inventory aims to stimulate new research-projects on the history of Ashkenazi Jewry in the Netherlands and to facilitate the research of the west-Yiddish speech variant that was spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews in The Netherlands.

Tehilah van Luit is a doctoral candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (PhD expected 2009) and a Posen Fellowship recipient from 2002-2005. Her current research interests include Yiddish sources in the Netherlands, Polish Jewish history and Galician Jewry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Research for this title was conducted on behalf of the Menasseh ben Israel Institute in Amsterdam, in cooperation with the University of Amsterdam and the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf (Germany). The Henriette Boaz Fund provided funding for the editing of the book.