Manuscripts Worth Millions
If you’re struggling to find a gift for that person who has everything and you’ve got a few hundred thousand dollars to spend, then Sotheby’s New York has the right auction for you.
On October 27 and 28, the Montefiore Endowment at Ramsgate, England, will auction off a wide array of rare Hebrew manuscripts that Marcia Malinowski, senior vice president of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s New York, touts as “the most significant collection to appear on the market in decades.”
The 433 manuscripts on the docket include biblical, legal and historical texts — many unpublished and dating back to the medieval period — that all together are expected to sell for between $8 and $11 million. A Kabbalistic manuscript from late 14th-century Italy, which explains the 72-letter name of God and illustrates the proper method for mystical meditation, is valued at about $30,000, while a 15th-century Hebrew Bible from Spain is expected to fetch about $300,000.
“It’s an incredibly beautiful penned manuscript,” Malinowski said in an interview with the Forward. “Just an extraordinary thing.”
Proceeds from the sale will fund scholarships and education — the stated purpose of the Montefiore Endowment.
The collection features Bibles, Kabbalistic essays, sermons, talmudic commentaries, halachic writings, responsa literature (rabbinic responses to questions of Jewish law), prayer books and papers covering a vast range of subjects in arts and sciences.
Culled from works across Europe and North Africa, the bulk of the offerings were acquired around 1900 by Moses Gaster, a Romanian scholar who served as principal for the college founded by Victorian gaslighting tycoon, banker and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore.
Gaster acquired the manuscripts from Leopold Zunz, a founder of the Science of Judaism, and book collector Solomon Hayyim Halberstam. Most were donated to Jews’ College in London, where they spent the last century.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
