An early-17h century collection of prayers to be recited as a protection against plague is among the rare Jewish books to go on sale at a London-based digital auction on Monday.
The 331 lots in the London Treasures auction contain letters from famous European rabbis and several documents relating to the British Jewish community.
Jonathan Fishburn, a specialist in antiquarian Judaica in London, said that while the capital had “always been an important part of the antiquarian book trade”, there had been few auctions of Hebrew books here in recent years.
“The last regular auctions of Hebrew books took place in the 1990s at Bloomsbury Auctions and these stopped when Daniel Kestenbaum who organised them went to New York and opened his own auction house there,” he said.
“However in January 2020 London Treasures, a new dedicated Judaica auction house based in London held its first Judaica sale and on October 26 it will hold its third sale, greatly facilitated by an Israeli internet auction bidding platform, Bidspirit.
“While many of the items are related to the Chasidic world, including autographs by Chasidic Rebbes and rare Chasidic Hebrew books - a speciality of the owner of the auction house, Naftali Knobloch - there are several notable items of Anglo-Jewish interest.”
One local item is a printed edition in Hebrew, English and Yiddish of a sermon given in 1807 by then Chief Rabbi, Solomon Hirschell, at the Great Synagogue which warned against sending children to a free Jewish school set up by Christian missionaries. “If anyone disobeys this warning, it should be considered as if they have converted to another religion,” he declared.
A rare Georgian haggadah from 1831 contains an engraving of the synagogue that once stood in St James’s Place in London.
Another item that caught Mr Fishburn’s eye is the British Jewish Book of Honour, which contains the names of some 50,000 Jewish soldiers from the British Empire who fought in the World War. Published by the Reverend Michael Adler in 1922, it was intended “to counter the rising antisemitism in the 1920s,” Mr Fishburn said.
The segulah – protection - against plague, for which opening bids will start at $3,000 (£2,300), dates from Basle in 1602. It contains Pitum Haktoret, a talmudic passage on the incense offerings in Temple times, which is traditionally recited as part of the Shabbat morning liturgy but was also thought to bring special benefits.
Rabbi Shlomo, son of Rabbi Mordechai of Mezheritch, who published it with his commentary, wanted “each person to have it as protection in case”.
While many of the lots are on offer for a few hundred pounds, one of the most precious is a rare siddur from Amsterdam, Shaar Hashamayim, dating from 1717 and listed at $30,000 (around £23,000).
A miniature edition of the Hebrew Bible, the smallest ever printed, measures just 2 cm by 3cm. Produced in Warsaw in 1895, it comes inside a metal box with a magnifying glass on the cover.
Among the rabbinical writings is a pamphlet, “The Breaking of the Tablets of Inquity”, by the 18th century German rabbi, Jacob Emden and associated with one of the most famous rabbinic disputes. Emden accused another leading rabbi, Jonathan Eybeschutz, of secret sympathies with the False Messiah, Shabbetai Tzvi.
There is also a letter from another leading rabbi of a later era, Ezriel Hildesheimer, from Berlin in 1864, appealing to the English Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore to help the Jews of Ethiopia.
