97 210 (AMERICAN JUDAICA). “HEBREW PRINTING IN AMERICA, 1735-1926” THE YOSEF GOLDMAN COLLECTION. Containing c. 1,009 titles built over many decades of careful, intelligent and assiduous pursuit. In his two-volume Catalogue entitled: Hebrew Printing in America: A History and Annotated Bibliography (New York, 2006), Yosef Goldman, the late Brooklyn-based bookman, provided a detailed record of 1,208 individual titles that comprises the most comprehensive record of Hebraica produced in America from the year 1735 until 1926. Of these 1,208 entries, Goldman possessed 1,009. It is these 1,009 titles that comprise this lot. Goldman worked on this collection for decades, probing, listing, gathering. Ari Kinsberg, working alongside, was the key individual who drove the research engine of this formidable bibliographic challenge, and it was Kinsberg who was behind the writing of the masterful Catalogue. Consequently, we are fortunate that Ari Kinsberg has prepared for the present auction-catalogue a descriptive essay that summarizes the holdings of the Yosef Goldman Collection of Hebrew Printing in America. A précis of the essay is below, while a far more extensive essay is available via the online version of the auction catalogue accessible at www.Kestenbaum.net. Sold not subject to return. See Arthur Kiron’s review: Yosef Goldman, Hebrew Printing in America, 1735–1926: A History and Annotated Bibliography. Research and editing by Ari Kinsberg. (Brooklyn, NY, 2006) in: Judaica Librarianship, Vol. 13 (2017) pp. 43-6. $300,000 - $500,000 ❧ Descriptive Summary of “Hebrew Printing in America.” Prepared by Ari Kinsberg. The Yosef Goldman Collection of Hebrew Printing in America (hereafter referred to as “HPA”) is a veritable treasure of the Jewish experience in the New World. This singular library consists of over one thousand Hebrew books, pamphlets and miscellaneous ephemera published in North America between 1735 and 1926. It is the remarkable product of a three-decades-long sedulous and tenacious bibliophilist mission to reconstruct a major but long forsaken component of the Jewish literary legacy. HPA is unparalleled in terms of scope, completeness and individual rarities. There is no collection of early American Hebrew imprints that is even remotely as rich as HPA anywhere in the world, either in private or institutional hands. With imprints from across the continent, including the earliest Hebrew works in various locales, HPA documents a fascinating untold chapter - actually many chapters - of Hebrew typography and bibliography. It is, however, much more than that. This exceptional collection presents to the world a practically ungleaned repository teeming with both historical and other data about the American Jewish community. Some of these materials were known but not fully studied and still have much to reveal about previously written chapters of history; other materials promise to provide gateways to completely uncharted paths of research. HPA has proven that it is impossible to tell the full and accurate story of any subject regarding American Jewr y without recourse to American Hebrew books. The best way to illustrate the breadth and wealth of HPA is to retell that story as seen through the pages of its holdings. (All bracketed numbers in this essay refer to holdings in the current HPA lot. “America” will generally refer to the United States or the areas it would ultimately comprise. See online version of this essay for further details from hereon). The HPA offering of over one thousand titles (representing even more individual volumes), include many of the utmost rarity. Many copies exist in just a scarce few institutional holdings. Of the unica, some were altogether unrecorded in any secondary source prior to the publication of HPA’s catalogue. All holdings are original editions and not modern reproductions, photocopies, etc. (Some libraries have preserved many of the works on microfilm only.) The HPA exemplars of certain volumes are of particular bibliographic importance because they preserve errata slips, unrecorded pages and other variants, inscriptions [#673], manuscript additions [#191], etc. All the major and obscure centers of Hebrew printing are included, including the first Hebrew prints of Cincinnati [#178, #268], Salt Lake City [#497], New Orleans [#67], Richmond [#88], St. Louis [#283], Toronto [#631], Minneapolis [#707], Newark [#899], Pittsburgh [#1099] and Washington, DC [#162]. The history of Hebrew printing in America is the history of American Jewry and it is impossible to tell the entire story of the American Jewish saga without recourse to the wealth of Hebrew sources gathered in HPA. There is literally no aspect of American Jewish history that is not documented in HPA. In the future, scholars - academic and hobbyists alike - will not be able to write about Jewish denominationalism, theology, philosophy, liturgy, poetry, Zionism, labor unionism, education, intellectual life, humor, family life, art, interfaith relations, gender studies or an endless array of other subjects without referencing American Hebraica. As the single largest library of pre-1927 imprints in the world (in private or institutional hands), this HPA offering will be the destination for researchers in need of Hebrew materials. The collection is not just far more complete and better documented than the one Ephraim Deinard attempted to amass almost a century ago, but it is actually the first collection of this scope ever offered for sale at auction. Moreover, it is one that will be impossible to duplicate in the future. A MORE DETAILED AND EXTENDED VERSION OF THIS ESSAY BY ARI KINSBERG IS AVAILABLE ONLINE VIA KESTENBAUM.NET.