It was the highest price ever paid for a Jewish book. And the sale, along with 11 other books, broke up the most valuable private Judaica collection ever assembled. How much further the famed Valmadonna Trust Library may be broken up is unclear—and remains a concern of scholars and collectors around the world. The book…
A crazed attacker shouting ant-Semitic expletives punched the manager of a New York Judaica shop and then fled on a Razr scooter, city police said. The NYPD is investigating the incident at West Side Judaica as a bias crime, officials said. The 52-year-old victim told investigators that the man entered the shop on the Upper…
On a nondescript street of brick row houses, nestled between an insurance office and a computer store, in an out of the way corner of Brooklyn known as Marine Park that is not on any subway lines, lies a small storefront. From the street, it’s impossible to see in — the glass windows are blocked…
Last month’s column, as you may recall, made much of Judaica collectors who prefer to sell rather than donate their holdings. No sooner had I made that claim than a number of readers as well as colleagues duly informed me that I was barking up the wrong tree. Dolefully, they pointed out that even if…
The Judaica department of Ukraine’s vast state library — one of the 10 largest in the world — occupies five rooms on the fourth and top floor of a Soviet-built branch of the system’s archipelago of buildings, which are spread across Ukraine’s capital. In a nod toward Ukraine’s energy crisis, the building is drafty and…
Calling all Cassandras, those given to gloom and doom about the pliancy of contemporary Jewish life, much less its future. I suggest they make a beeline for Chicago’s Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership’s new exhibition, “Amy Reichert: Reinventing Judaica,” whose display of Jewish ritual objects will go a very long way toward dispelling…
Photo: Menachem Wecker For the past three years, mid-March has meant for me a pilgrimage to the southern Dutch town of Maastricht to cover The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF). Undoubtedly one of the world’s finest, the fair offers (for a hefty price) everything from Greco-Roman antiquities and Rembrandts to Warhols, photography and modern sculpture….
A Hanukkah lamp that was recently given to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam may have one of the most compelling provenances of any Jewish ritual object. The lamp was created by a Christian (Dutch Reformed) silversmith, Harmanus Nieuwenhuys, for the Dutch Jewish community in 1751 — when Jews were still barred from guilds. (Harmanus’…
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