Celebrated Collection of Hebrew Texts on View, on Sale
Jack Lunzer, whose private collection of more than 11,000 Hebrew books and manuscripts is on display at the New York auction house Sotheby’s until February 19, has a line he often repeats: “When two or three Jews get together, they buy a printing press.”
The Valmadonna Trust Library, which is valued at more than $40 million and will be sold as a complete collection by Sotheby’s in a private sale, is a testament to the People of the Book’s drive to write. Bound pages from four continents, and almost 1,000 years of the printed Hebrew word line shelves from floor to skylight in the auction house’s 10th-floor exhibition space.
“Many Hebrew printing presses had ephemeral existences,” explained David Redden, a vice chairman of Sotheby’s, at the exhibition last week.
At various times during the past millennium, Redden explained, Hebrew printing was often summarily outlawed: Presses could bring repute to a town and put it on the map; they could also be run out of town. Printed editions — mostly religious, but also scientific — which were often made in runs of up to several hundred, were burned. “These are really rare books — their brothers and sisters [who] survived,” Redden said, referring to the collection.
From the Codex Valmadonna I, a Pentateuch (the first five books of the bible) written in England in the summer of 1189 — the only existing dated Hebrew text from medieval England before the Jews’ expulsion 100 years later — to a scarce run of The Israel Messenger, an English-language Zionist periodical printed in Shanghai at the turn of the 20th century, each item has a unique history. But cumulatively, they become iterations of something greater: The Valmadonna library, as a whole, is an artifact chronicling the transcendent literature of the Jewish Diaspora.
A decorative border, imprinted by a metal cut frame, adorns the page of a Torah held open to the portion of The Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1), in which the Israelites celebrate their freedom from Egypt. The border is first seen in Spanish texts of the 1480s. After the 1492 expulsion, Spanish Jews took their tools with them, and the frame was used in a Hebrew text printed in Portugal — only to vanish and appear once again in books printed in Constantinople following the Portuguese expulsion, in 1497.
Lunzer, who has been collecting books since he was 10, stacked three or four books deep in every corner of his house in London. Now in his 80s, he sat at the exhibition last week in a suit and a white yarmulke, delighted to talk about the collection that his daughter, Myra Waiman, described as his sixth child. “This is not only the history of the Bible, but the history of humanity — of decency, irrespective of color, creed. It’s the first book; it is our guide.”
The Valmadonna Trust Library is on view through Thursday, February 19, at Sotheby’s, 1334 York Avenue at 72nd Street, New York, (212) 606-7000.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.