Torn pants of late haredi Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky will be auctioned starting at $3,200
The bidding at the Prime Judaica auction house Lakewood, New Jersey, begins March 1
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky Photo by Dudi Friedman/Wikimedia Commons
(JTA) — A pair of pants coming up for auction are being described as “holy” — and not just because they’re a little torn.
Rather, the pants once belonged to the late Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, an Israeli haredi Orthodox leader considered by his followers to be the leading Jewish authority of his generation. Kanievsky died last year at age 94, and now anyone can be the owner of his trousers – provided they can afford them. The starting bid is $3,200.
The bidding at the Prime Judaica auction house, in the heavily haredi New Jersey city of Lakewood, begins March 1. The item is listed in Hebrew as “Holy pants from the Prince of Torah, our leader Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.”
Included on the auction house page is a letter written and signed by Gedalyahu Konigsberg, who identifies himself as a grandson of, and former aide to, Chaim Kanievsky.
“I, the undersigned, testify that these black pants… of the Shai Shaul company, with a rip on the bottom, were worn by my elder, the esteemed Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, of blessed righteous memory, for a long period of time,” reads the letter signed by Konigsberg. “I merited to see him wearing this with my own eyes.”
On the website of an online retailer, Shai Shaul pants run from roughly $13.50 to $16.25.
Letters and legal rulings written by Kanievsky have gone to auction for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, and started going up for sale during his lifetime.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
