Large collection of bookplates belonging to Jewish personalities and institutional collections.

The cultivation of a personal library is often seen as a Jewish value in its own right, and the use of a personal bookplate affirms the importance the collector places on his own relationship to his books. The collation and careful preservation of these Jewish bookplates has been a labor of love for collector Robert J. Weinberg, curator of the Rowe Bookplate Museum. In the present lot two binders contain primarily personal bookplates and one binder primarily the bookplates of American Jewish congregations and institutions. Many of the bookplates were submitted personally by the inscribees to Weinberg for the purpose of this collection. Where available, provenance has also been documented. Highlights of the collection include the oldest Hebrew bookplate, designed by Hebraic scholar, John Moore (1742- 1821) as well as the oldest Jewish bookplate designed by Benjamin Levi for Isaac Mendes in 1746 in London. Individuals of note whose bookplates appear in this collection include: Marcus Nathan Adler, Gershom Scholem, Benjamin Cardozo, Moses Montefiore, Albert Einstein, David Wolffsohn, David de Sola Pool, and Solomon Schechter. The collection includes bookplates designed by artists Arthur Szyk, Marc Chagall, Herman Struck, Uriel Birnbaum, Jacob Steinhardt, Ilya Schor and Joseph Budko, some of them signed. Institutions from whose libraries bookplates derive include: Touro Synagogue (Newport, RI), Mikveh Israel (Philadelphia), Shearith Israel (New York), as well as many universities.