A copy of a sefer titled Yalkut Nahmani published in Warsaw in 1937 came in to the store among a small collection of books I acquired this week. Many books published in Poland before the war found their way to libraries and homes in the United States, but it is rare to be able to trace how and when the book traveled.
This volume though, retained inscriptions and markings that recorded its route to America. This sefer seems to have been sent to New York, in 1939, by an Eliyahu Margolies of Warsaw, several months before the Nazis invaded Poland. The recipient was his relative, the Sanzer Rebbe of Brooklyn and it was sent as a token gift, alongside a request that the Rebbe pray on his behalf. On the upper portion of the title page, and inscription reads:
מנחה שלוחה לכ"ק מחותנינו הרה"ג וה"צ בנש"ק אדמו"ר הרב ר' מנחם בנימין בן ציון שליט"א הלברשטם
ב"ה א אדר שמרבין בו בשמחה תרצ"ט אלי' בן הינדע
translating as:
Sent as an offering to my Mechutan, Harav Hagaon and Tzadik, scion of greatness, the Admor R. Menachem Binyamin Ben-Zion Halberstam
the first of the month of Adar, the month where happiness is multiplied, 5799 (1939)
Eliyahu Ben Hinda
On the free-end, the ownership stamp of Eliyahu Margolies appears, stating מספרי אלי' ב"ר יוסף מרגליות ווארשא. Inserted in to the volume is a handwritten page, listing the names of Margolies, his wife and his seven year old son, with requests for a Livelihood for the father, health for the wife and health and a desire for Torah for the son, Ahron Shraga.
Rebbe Menachem Binyamin Ben Tzion Rottenberg-Halberstam who received the sefer, was one of the earliest Hasidic Rebbes to arrive in the United States, where he settled in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. He served as Rebbe in his small shul, named Divre Chaim, in Bensonhurst for many decades, until his passing in 1957.
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