Other items of interest include Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity in Yiddish; two leaves of a manuscript of Pirke Merkabah written in Spain in the 14th century; and a volume from the Bomberg Talmud. You may recall that a full set of this Talmud recently sold for nine million dollars.
A few weeks ago I also supplied two first editions of the Abarbanel, which were presented by an organization to Benjamin Netanyahu, whose father wrote the definitive work on this famous rabbinic figure.
Where do you find all these works?
Well, I get phone calls if somebody has a library and is moving or if someone who owned a lot of books has passed away. There are also rare book collections that occasionally are sold for one reason or another. And then there are many synagogues in small towns in the United States that are closing. They all had libraries, and somebody has to take care of them, so I’m often the one to do it.
You recently acquired the Toronto Jewish library.
That was quite a sad situation. Toronto had a very fine library of about 50,000 books. It was around since the 1930s but the community, I guess, just didn’t support it. The library of the Central Queens Y, which had about 8,000 books, just closed this month as well. I also picked up the library of the Jewish Center in Fairlawn. Nobody was using it.
It’s a different world today. People don’t go to their little shul anymore to hang out and read books. If they do read, they’re reading at home. It’s just the way things are.
What kind of customers enter your store?
Rabbis, book collectors, people who have family interests. Many people, for example, discover their grandfather wrote a sefer and want a copy. And then there are learned people who have specific interests. I have a few mohelim, for example, who want good libraries on milah. One of them has 500-600 books on milah. I sold him probably half of them.
The general idea is, whatever interest you may have, chances are I can supply you with reading material for a lifetime.
Do you have non-Jewish customers?
Yes. There are quite a few evangelical Christians in the U.S. who are very pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. There’s also some interest in Asia. The Japanese are known to have quite an interest in Jewish studies. In Tokyo, for example, you have Yiddish courses in Tokyo University, and I’ve sold them a lot of Yiddish books. I’ve also sold a complete ArtScroll shas that went to South Korea.
I also have someone from Qatar who has been buying anti-Zionist works from me for a few years already. I generally send him an extra book or two that’s more balanced so hopefully he can read those as well and not end up hating us as much.
Is it true that old chassidic sefarim are often more expensive than regular sefarim?
Yes, because many chassidic groups were small. Take Satmar, for example. Before the war, the Satmar Rebbe just barely had a minyan and 200-300 chassidim at most. Today there are tens of thousands, and everyone wants a piece of that history. There are only so many books published and only so many letters he wrote, so if everybody wants it, there’s going to be a bidding war – and that’s what happens.
Other expensive chassidic sefarim include ones published by the Shapiro family in Slavita and Zhitomir in Europe. They were grandchildren of Rav Pinchas of Koretz, and the Skeverer Rebbe prefers to use only these sefarim. But the Shapiros only published so much and time and the Holocaust did their own too, so the market has risen quite a bit for them.