Menasseh ben Israel. Mikveh Israel.

Auction 98 | Thursday, June 16th, 2022 at 1:00pm
Fine Judaica: Rare Printed Books, Manuscripts, & Autograph Letters

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Lot 32
(SOFER, MOSHE).

Menasseh ben Israel. Mikveh Israel.

<<Personal copy of R. Moshe Sofer>> (grandson of the Chasam Sofer) with his signature and stamp. ff. 24. Contemporary boards. 8vo.

Warsaw: Zvi Jacob Bamberg 1841

Est: $400 - $600
A work dealing with the identification of the Lost Tribes of Israel, owned by a rabbi who ‘returned’ a local ‘lost tribe’ in Transylvania. R. Moshe Sofer (1841-1927) was the son of R. Avraham Shmuel Binyamin Sofer, known as the Kethav Sofer, and grandson of his namesake, the Chasam Sofer. R. Moshe served as rabbi in several communities in Eastern Hungary and Transylvania and was an expert mohel. He was deeply involved in the case of the Szekler Sabbatarians (described below) and personally circumcised them. The Szekler Sabbatarians were a group of Hungarians who had been observing numerous Jewish practices since the 1500’s. Persecuted for centuries for their beliefs, they came out of the shadows with the official recognition of Judaism by the Hungarian government in 1868. The Sabbatarians sought to affiliate with the Jewish community; the Jewish establishment were unsure how best to suitably proceed. When the Sabbatarians of Bözödújfalu, Transylvania, sought to formally convert to Judaism, this too was met with uncertainty by rabbinic leadership, as some local rabbis related that members of the group had converted centuries earlier and kept their Judaism secret. The Sabbatarians were eventually circumcised and intermarried with the local Jewish community. A grim confirmation of their status came with their deportation to Auschwitz with the rest of the local Jews.