A letter to Rabbi Henkin requesting help in publishing Keren Yishai

 

 Here is a nice piece of History, a letter sent from Rabbi Shmuel Silbermann, requested help from Rabbi Henkin in publishing his father's works Keren Yishai

An unexplainable coincidence, A Library, A Customer & the Sandak

This morning after hauling in to the store a recent library acquired, a customer enters our store. Briefing him on the recent acquisition, I mention offhand that the books came from a fellow who lived for a time in Portland. Turns out the customer had lived in Portland decades ago as well. Not only did the customer know the now deceased owner of the books, the man was his Sandak!
The families were both very good friends and a few phone calls later the widow and the customer were both on the line together reminiscing life in Portland 30 years ago.
Assuming there are 15,000,000 Jews in the world, the chance of walking in to a bookstore who just acquired your Sandak's library is somewhere like 1 in 15 million. Just Fabulous to me!

For Posterity the Business Card of ISAIAH BERGER, BOOKSELLER, BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN, NY

Isaiah Berger sold Jewish books in the early 1900s, in Brownsville, 125 Dumont Avenue, Brooklyn. His son is Professor David Berger, dean of Yeshiva University. "Judaeo-Oriental Book Service"

Advertisment for a Jewish Bookseller in London 1904, R. Mazin et Co

Selling books was a much larger operation a century ago. Take a look at this advertisement publishing in Ahiasaf 1904, for R. Mazin et co Booksellers in London. They sold new, used, rare books, were bookbinders, sold wholesale, sold retail, published books, bartered books, sold books on consignment as well. Books were not all they sold, tefillin, torahs, mezuzot, albums, greeting cards..... portraits, music sheets.....Journals in all languages... the list goes on and on.
Wat happened to all London's bookbuyers, I will find it hard to believe that such an operation can survive in today's London Jewish Community. If my math does not err me, today for a standard Jewish Community, you need one bookstore for every 100 Pizza Stores.
It's nice to see the ad call anything out of England Hutz La'aretz (חוץ לארץ), typical British imperialists, who think the world revolves around their empire.

the Bar Mitzvah Bentcher of RAANAN ABRAHAM AGUS today, head of Goldman Sachs

If you stumbled across the humble looking bentcher given at the Bar-Mitzvah of Raanan A. Agus, you wouldn't imagine he now is one of the heads of Goldman Sachs. Either way, here it is:

ITZCHAK WEISCHSELBAUM, BOOKSELLER IN BELZ, GALICIA

Here's a nice old stamp of a bookseller of Hebrew books in Belz, Galicia

יצחק ווינשילבוים

ספרים האנדלוג

בעלז גאליציען

Jsak Weischselbaum

Buchhandlung

Belz, Galizien

The book is a Zeror Hamor printed in Warsaw, 1879. 

"A bookseller's stamp, is his legacy"

New World interacting with Old, RABBI JOSEPH H. LOOKSTEIN & RABBI YOSEF E. HENKIN

Here is a great quote from this letter I just got sent by Rabbi Joseph Hyman Lookstein to Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin ""FORGIVE ME FOR WRITING TO YOU IN ENGLISH, BUT I DO NOT HAVE A HEBREW STENOGRAPHER AND TYPIST. I AM SURE, HOWEVER, THAT YOU ARE ALREADY A MASTER OF THE LANGUAGE, AND THEREFORE, THE LETTER WILL BE PERFECTLY INTELLIGIBLE TO YOU."
Rav Henkin was already in the USA 44 years at the time. It's nice to see the way the 2 very different generations of Rabbis in America corresponded.

A Purchase of a Library turned Adventure

During a recent library acquisition in Boro Park, Brooklyn, my bookhunting took an adventurous turn. After being led in to a house by the owner of the property and the books, I was left alone to box and cart out the books. Not 2 minutes later, Shomrim pulled up and demanded I explain what I was doing in someone else's house. Apparently, a neighbor saw someone they didn't recognize moving boxes out of the house and gave Shomrim a call, and do their job they did. They asked me for ID, called the owner of the house, confirmed all was ok and only then, leave me back to my task.
But I got my first New Order, by Arthur Szyk there!

how do you translate מגיד משרים? Here is one Rabbi's version

Here is a letterhead of Rabbi Benzion Yadler, interesting is his translation of the title he gives himself מגיד משרים, here is his version of it "Grand Speaker". It is entertaining to see how such Great Maggids viewed themselves.

ISAIAH BERGER: A JEWISH BOOKSELLER OF YESTERYEAR AND HIS REFINED TASTE OF BOOKS

AN OLD CATALOG PUBLISHED BY ISAIAH BERGER

Show me your library and I'll tell you who you are. Even more so can be said of booksellers, as their libraries are easily culled from unwanted books and gifts they never needed. Their libraries tend to reflect their taste and interests very well.
I just chanced upon a book owned by a Jewish Bookseller of generations ago, Isaiah Berger, who sold his books in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York. It would be a commercial suicide to try to sell books there now, but at it's prime, Brownsville had one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. The book itself, was The laughable stories by Bar Hebraeus, edited by Wallis Budge, with the Original Syriac and an English translation. Budge's book are in great demand now by collectors of Occult and Ancient Egyptian History, but I would doubt that more than a handful of people ever read the book. Berger took the time to leaves his notes throughout the book, pointing similarities to Jewish texts and pointing out Jewish Sources to the stories in the book, his notes being in English, Yiddish and Hebrew. I never had the pleasure of meeting Berger, but after seeing this book, I feel to be old friends of his.