Kestenbaum & Company, Auctioneers of Rare Books, Manuscripts and Fine Art

On the 13th of March, the Auction Room at the Doral Park Avenue Hotel in New York City was filled to capacity whilst numerous phone and order bidders joined in participating in the most recent highly anticipated sale. Most every important figure in the close-knit segment of the rare book market was involved as noted figures from private, academic, museum and library collections around the world vied to outbid each other for the prestigious volumes new to the market.

The collection of items comprised the property of a number of owners including: the second portion of Important Hebrew Printed Books & Manuscripts from the Library of the London Beth Din, sold by order of the Honorary Officers of the United Synagogue, as well as property formerly in The Kramarsky Collection, New York (With Additions). Together with a collection of Graphic Art.

• A luxury pocket-sized Pentateuch with Hebrew and Aramaic (Targum) on facing pages, printed on vellum. Sabbionetta, 1557, sold for $34,500.

• A Hebrew Manuscript on Vellum of Meir of Rothenberg’s Shailoth U’teshuvoth [responsa], 14th century, sold for $33,350.

• Hebrew Medical manuscript of Jacob Zahalon’s (Rome 1630-Ferrara 1693) Or Ha’rofim [medical treaties], Ferrara(?), 17th Century, fetched $31,050.

• The First Edition of the Talmud Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud), upon which all further editions are based, printed by Daniel Bomberg, in Venice 1523. Sold for $29,900, over twice the high estimate.

• The First Edition of Siddur HaTephiloth Keminhag Hakara’im; prayer book for the entire year according to Karaite rite. Venice, printed by Daniel Bomberg in 1528. A Sixteenth Century Machzor of Remarkable Rarity. Only one complete copy extant, found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Sold for $24,150.

• The 1695 Amsterdam Hagadah. The First Hagadah illustrated with copperplate engravings. The First Illustrated Amsterdam Hagadah. This Copy With the Rare Variant Engraved Title-Page. Complete with a fine folding engraved Hebrew map of the Holy Land. Sold for $20,700, the second time in a twelve month period that this work has fetched over $20,000.

• A Handsome Set of Daniel Bomberg’s 1546-8 important edition of the Rabbinic Bible sold for $20,700.

• The first Hebrew Grammar by an American; Martin del Castillo’s Arte Hebraispano. Dikduk Lashon Hakodesh Belshon Sepharadith, Lyons, 1676. Sold for $18,400.

• A rare first edition of an important anti-Talmudic incunable, Thalmut - Objectiones in dicta Thalmut seductoris Judeorum, Strassburg 1488, sold for $17,250.

• Two early editions of Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch [Code of Jewish Law]; the second edition printed by Giorgio di Cavalli in Venice 1567 and Isaac Prostitz’s Cracow edition of 1593-4, sold for $16,100 and $14,950 respectively.

• Festival Prayer-Book According to Sephardic rite. Venice, 1735. Bound in a Fine 18th Century Italian Silver Binding, with the crest of the Portaleone family on the covers. Possibly Brescia 1776-1784. Workshop of Domenico Bartelli. Sold for $14,9510.

• A Collection of Ten Geniza fragments, among them Old Hebrew (Samaritan), Egyptian and Oriental scripts on a variety of topics including prayers, psalms and rabbinical laws. Sold for $10,925.