Do you have any favorite sefarim?
One of my favorites is the mussar sefer Marpe Lashon (Healing of the Tongue) by Rabbi Raphael HaKohen, rabbi of Hamburg, Germany…. He is famous for his responsa and chiddushim on the Talmudic tractates of Kodshim. The sefer, printed in 1790 in Altona, Germany, covers topics such as teshuvah, humility, tzedakah, Yom HaDin and various other topics. Although I already owned subsequent editions, as the sefer had been republished in Vilna and after that in America, I decided to buy the original for two hundred dollars. Later, when comparing the editions, I observed that the Vilna edition didn’t have the lengthy introduction found in the original, as well as divrei Torah from the author’s son and son-in-law. After further comparison, I noticed that the chapters on tzedakah and humility, which were around twenty pages in the original, were only two pages long in the reprinted versions.
This sefer was one of Rabbi Aharon Kotler’s favorite sefarim; he quoted from it many times in his lectures. He also had difficulty trying to make sense of what the author was saying due to these incomplete chapters. I approached Rabbi Binyamin Zeilberger, rosh yeshiva of Bais HaTalmud in Brooklyn at the time, who had reprinted the sefer from the Vilna edition. I showed him the original edition and told him about the missing fifty pages. In 1987, he printed the full version of the sefer from my copy, thanking me in the introduction for giving him the original text. This shows the importance of obtaining original editions and comparing them to subsequent editions.
Are there many collectors such as yourself?
There used to be a chevrah of collectors that included both rabbis and ba’alei batim who possessed large private libraries. Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld, zt”l, owned a large library. I assessed it after he passed away. There’s a story told that he and Rabbi Berel Perlow, an avid collector of newly published sefarim, saw each other at Biegeleisen JS Books, a popular sefarim store in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn. Rabbi Freifeld put his arm around Rabbi Perlow and quipped, “Reb Berel, we’re like two drunks in a bar.”
They say the Gerrer Rebbe, known as the Imrei Emes…had one of the world’s largest libraries. Much of his collection disappeared during the Holocaust. He was once in Krakow in an old sefarim shop and climbed up a ladder to the top shelf, hunting for rare sefarim. He came down covered in dust. The owner of the store asked him, “Rebbe! Iz dos nisht ah yetzer hara ozoi vi alla yetzer haras?” (Is this not a yetzer hara like all the other yetzer haras?) He responded, “You’re right, but it’s a kosher yetzer hara.”
Were you ever subject to significant danger while acquiring sefarim?
I personally wasn’t, but I know people who were. My father-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Uri Lipschitz, a former editor of The Jewish Press, was friends with Rabbi Harry Bronstein, who founded the Al Tidom Association, established to help Russian Jewry struggling behind the Iron Curtain. As an experienced mohel, he traveled to Russia many times to perform brissim and to train mohels there. During these trips, various people came to him, asking him to smuggle their manuscripts out of Russia.
One of these requests came from Rabbi Yitzchok Isaac ben Dov Ber Krasilschikov, also known as the Gaon of Poltava. He gave Rabbi Bronstein his manuscript on Rambam while he lay in the hospital on his deathbed. He also made him promise to publish his monumental twenty-volume commentary on the Yerushalmi he had worked on. Because of the illegal brissim, Rabbi Bronstein was arrested and tortured by the KGB. He subsequently suffered a heart attack. He miraculously survived and returned to America. He worked hard for many years to obtain the manuscript on the Yerushalmi. [In 1980, the first volume of Rabbi Krasilschikov’s commentary on Tractate Berachot was finally published. The printing of Rabbi Krasilschikov’s colossal commentary on the Yerushalmi is an ongoing effort, currently overseen by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.]
