Rabbi Eliezer Katzman is a consultant and appraiser of Judaica and Hebrew books for Kestenbaum & Company and has also worked for Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and other auction houses.
Rabbi Katzman, who lives in Brooklyn, has appraised the collections in the Rare Book Room of the Mendel Gottesman Library of Hebraica/Judaica at Yeshiva University, the collection in the Jewish Public Library of Montreal, and the rare books and manuscripts of the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia. He has published many scholarly articles on Jewish history, Jewish law, and bibliography and serves as associate editor of Yeshurun, a scholarly biannual publication on Jewish law, history, and bibliography.
BSB: Tell us about your extensive library of rare sefarim and how you became involved in collecting.
Rabbi Katzman: I own an eclectic collection of about 10,000 sefarim. Originally I bought sefarim for my own learning. If I had to prepare a shiur and needed a sefer, I couldn’t go hunting for it in shul late at night. [But] my interest in rare sefarim began with my father, Rabbi Asher Katzman, who was a rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. He had between 30,000 and 40,000 sefarim. I inherited the bug. A lot of the sefarim I have are from him; others I bought on my own.
Where do you keep your vast collection?
I have sefarim filling my garage, shed, and basement. A young collector called me once, lamenting his shalom bayis problems; there was no room left in his house. He had run out of shelf space and began piling sefarim on all of their chairs. His wife complained that there was no place to sit. He solved the problem by purchasing the Otzar HaHochma digital library that has approximately 71,000 sefarim scanned in page after page. He told me it saved his marriage.
What are the most important factors when assessing a sefer’s market value?
The first factor is obviously age. The rarest books are known as incunabula – books printed before 1501, when printing was in its infancy. Jewish incunabula are especially rare. For example, a Jewish book printed in 1492 is worth considerably more than a non-Jewish book from the same period. The Jewish people studied their books throughout the exiles, so complete, intact Jewish books are extremely rare. Jewish books were often burned over the centuries – another reason they are rare. There were books printed right before the Holocaust, most of which were destroyed by the Nazis. Those that survived are very valuable.
Currently, I write the descriptions of the sefarim and manuscripts featured in the Kestenbaum & Company catalogs. The catalogs describe the importance of each sefer, when it was printed, its condition, and what it’s worth. If a famous person wrote marginal notes in a sefer, it increases the sefer’s worth. A sefer that once belonged to Rav Moshe Feinstein that contains his notes is worth much more [than a sefer without notes]. Rabbi Baruch Frankel-Teomim, known as the Baruch Taam [1760-1828], the father-in-law of Rav Chaim Sanzer, wrote notes in the margins of all his sefarim. Recently, Rabbi Baruch Shimon Schneerson, the son-in-law of Rabbi Dov Berish Weidenfeld, the Tchebiner Rav, published a collection of the Baruch Taam’s marginal notes on various sefarim.
There are two categories of rare Jewish books: printed sefarim and manuscripts. Many people view a letter or manuscript by a chassidic rebbe or the Chofetz Chaim as intrinsically holy. [Nowadays,] a handwritten letter by the Chofetz Chaim…is worth approximately $20,000. Even a typed letter with only his signature may be worth a few thousand dollars.
[To command a high price,] a sefer has to be complete; a book missing a title page is worth substantially less. It should be in good condition…. Noncollectors often assume that older books are in worse condition than later ones. But that’s not necessarily the case. After 1860, chemicals were added to paper. That’s why books from later periods often have brittle pages. The paper used in earlier books – rag paper – remains fresh.
