First Printed Edition Of The Torah In Hebrew $1,400,000 - $2,000,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

"The educated man knows, indeed, from his knowledge of history that the art of Gutenberg saw its inception with a Latin Bible in the middle of the XVth century. Yet what layman knows when the original text appeared for the first time? Not even the bibliophile knows; although a non-Jewish expert, Count Giacomo Manzoni, asserts in his enthusiasm for the book that the first edition of the Hebrew Bible is the most precious book on earth" (Lazarus Goldschmidt, 1950)

A newly discovered, large and complete copy in very fine condition of the first printed edition of the Pentateuch - the first five books of the Bible aka Torah - in Hebrew is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits, Wednesday, April 30, 2014.


Printed on vellum in Bologna by Abraham ben Hayim of Pesaro for Joseph ben Abraham Caravita, this, the Hamishah humshe Torah was published on January, 25, 1482 with Aramaic paraphrase (Targum Onkelos) and commentary by Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac).


Rarer than copies of the Gutenberg Bible (49, per last census), and one of only twenty-eight surviving copies on vellum (with eleven survivors on paper), most incomplete, it is estimated to sell for $1,400,000 - $2,000,000 (€1,000,000-1,500,000; £900,000-1,300,000).

Arguably the most important book in the history of Hebrew printing and publishing, it incorporates the first appearance in print of the ancient Targum attributed to Onkelos. Rashi’s commentary, also included, was first published in Rome around a dozen years earlier. This first edition of the Pentateuch in its original language is the first Hebrew book with printed vowel and cantillation signs (those symbols beneath the letters).

Abraham ben Hayim may have started as a textile printer and dyer and/or bookbinder in Pesaro. His first recorded printing press stood at Ferrara in 1477, which produced two books, beginning with Levi ben Gershom’s Be’ur sefer lyov (Commentary on the Book of Job), edited and/or financed by Nathan of Salò; then it completed - about two thirds of the text - Jacob ben Asher’s Tur yoreh de’ah (Teacher of Knowledge), which had been started at the press of Abraham ben Solomon Conat in Mantua. At his second press, in Bologna, Abraham ben Hayim worked for Joseph ben Abraham, a member of the Caravita, an influential Jewish family of bankers.

In Bologna, Abraham ben Hayim first printed this fully vocalized biblical text with cantillation marks, a landmark in the history of Hebrew book production not only for the importance of its text, but no less for its pioneering technique of casting and setting accents; this fully developed typographical accomplishment can only be compared with Francesco Griffo’s solution for adding accents to the Aldine Greek founts some dozen years later.


Abraham ben Hayim da Pesaro and Francesco Griffo da Bologna are likely to have known each other and it's possible that Griffo cut Abraham’s punches; both were subsequently associated with the Soncino family of printers in Italy, although at dates about two decades apart. An earlier typographical attempt at adding Hebrew accents, in a 1477 folio edition of the Psalms printed by a consortium of typographers in Northern Italy, was aborted after a few pages. The only other surviving Bolognese production by Abraham ben Hayim is slightly later in date than this Torah, a folio edition of the Five Scrolls (Megillot), now recorded in two copies (Vatican and Parma Bibl. Palatina).


Liturgical readings of the Torah in synagogue, then as now, must be done from manuscript scrolls. This, the Bologna editio princeps, combining the text with the Aramaic targum and Rashi’s commentary, was aimed at an educational market, the codex format being most efficient for study.

Rashi’s commentary was first printed in Rome c. 1470 as a separate edition by three Jewish contemporaries of the Christian proto-typographers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz. The second separate edition - the first dated Hebrew printed book - appeared on February 18, 1475 from the press of Abraham ben Garton at Reggio di Calabria (a single copy known), while the third edition of 1476 is the first Hebrew book printed in Spain.

Another edition of the Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haftarot and Megillot, also vocalized and with cantillation accents, was printed somewhere in Italy by Isaac ben Aron d’Este and Moses ben Eliezer Raphael (3 copies extant and 7 single leaves); its date has in the past been assigned to c. 1480 (Goff Heb-13; Offenberg 25), based on research on by A. Spanier (Soncino Blätter I, 77), but it is now more accurately dated to c. 1489 from paper and watermark evidence in the Vatican Library copy (Piccard, Wasserzeichen Lilie II, 945).

Two obscure Iberian editions of the Torah - little known because of their extreme rarity - may also belong to the early 1480s, and may also be candidates for the first printed edition of the Torah in Hebrew: Offenberg 23=Goff Heb-16(III) recorded only in fragments of eight leaves (New York JTSL), one leaf (Oxford Bodleian) and a partial leaf (Jerusalem NLI); Offenberg 26=Goff Heb-16(II) surviving in a single copy (Florence Laurenziana) and a fragment of of 4 leaves (JTSL).

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BIBLE, Pentateuch, in Hebrew – Hamishah humshe Torah, with Aramaic paraphrase (Targum Onkelos) and commentary by Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac). Edited by Joseph Hayim ben Aaron Strasbourg Zarfati. Bologna: Abraham ben Hayim of Pesaro for Joseph ben Abraham Caravita, 5 Adar I [5]242 = 25th January 1482.

Median folio (320 x 230 mm). Printed on vellum (flesh side to flesh side, hair side to hair side, the sheets highly polished to minimize contrast). Collation: 110 28 310 48(-7) 58(-8) 62 710 8-98 106 1110 124 13-146 (Genesis-Exodus); 1510 168 176 18-218.10 228 234 248 256 2610 27-288 296 (Leviticus-Deuteronomy, 19/1v beginning of Numbers, 29/5v colophon, 29/6 blank). 219 leaves: Complete (but without final blank).

Vocalized biblical text with accents, surrounded by paraphrase in a narrow outer column and commentary in long lines above and below, the pages set in formes (the outer forme of the outermost vellum sheet of each quire printed on the fesh side). Square Hebrew type 1:180 (text, headlines), semi-cursive Hebrew type 2:90 (paraphrase, commentary and colophon). 20-21 lines of text and headline and 40-42 lines of paraphrase to the full page, numbers of commentary lines varying, no printed signatures or catchwords. (Light yellowing of the hair sides of the sheets, some minor stains, a few small wormholes at beginning and end, but in VERY FINE CONDITION, WITH LARGE MARGINS.) 18th-century binding of brown sheep over pasteboard (front cover and spine gone, back cover preserved but worn and detached, original sewing somewhat defective, frst quire detached from the book block). Modern folding box.

Provenance: inscribed, signed and dated by three Italian censors. Luigi da Bologna, Dominican friar, March 1599 – Camillo Jaghel 1613 – Fra Renato da Modena 1626. Individual words or short phrases censored, scored through in ink on 1/2r, 1/6r, 2/3v, 5/2v and 22/4r and several words erased on 10/6v and 11/3v, all in Rashi’s commentary. – There is no evidence of more recent provenance, except for the modest 18th-century binding, which is probably French. – French Private Collection, by descent to the present owner.

Hain 12568; GW M30624; BMC XIII, 26-27 (C.49.d.2); Proctor 6557; Goff Heb-18; CIBN Heb-4; IDL 2440; IGI E-12; Oates 2482; Bod-inc Heb-8. De Rossi I, 7; Steinschneider 2; Thesaurus A15; Van Straalen p. 29; Zedner p. 106; Marx 7; Goldstein 20; HSTC 22; Offenberg 13. ISTC ib00525570.

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5/1/2014: UPDATE: Sold for €2,785,500 ($3,850,679).
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Images courtesy of Christies, with our thanks.
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Original Schindler's List Offered At $3,000,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Don't miss your chance to own a piece of history that has inspired many on the difference one person can make in the face of great danger. This exceedingly rare original Schindler’s List is the only one ever on the market. It emanates from the family of Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s accountant and right hand man (played by Ben Kingsley in the Academy Award-winning film). There are 3 others known which are in institutional hands. It is 14 pages in length and lists 801 male names, dated April 18, 1945. It is guaranteed authentic… Itzhak Stern typed up the 14 page list on onion skin paper. Up for auction is not a copy of that list, but the actual one. It was sold by Itzhak Stern's nephew to the current owner. It is dated in pencil on the first page, April 18, 1945."

An original of Oscar Schindler's list of factory workers to be saved from Nazi gas chambers was offered through an online auction that ended Sunday July 28th at 9PM EDT. On eBay. For  $3,000,000. That's three million george w's. It did not sell.

I, as most professional antiquarian booksellers, am customarily dubious about rare books and documents sold through eBay. Prices often appear to be calculated within a Martian atmosphere with little connection to market realities by sellers who are often amateurs, at best, and authentication can be a challenge. So, when I learned of this offer I simply shook my head: another wacko episode on eBay, the auction network at the bottom of the ratings.

However, when I casually mentioned this offer to a highly respected trade colleague here in Los Angeles he told me that he knew the seller. Not only that but the seller, Gazin Auctions/Auction Cause, was his next door neighbor.

Prior to the auction's end, I contacted Eric Gazin to find out if this is real or if I can share the opium pipe he's been sucking on.

SJG: How did you arrive at the offering price? Can you tell me something about the owner? How did the owner find you? I ask the last because I find it curious that it is being offered on eBay and not through Sotheby's, Christie's, or any other major auction house.

EG: The owner [in Israel] wishes to remain anonymous. This came to me through Gary Zimet, owner of Moments in Time, a document dealer. He is the one who arrived at this price. Contrary to conventional wisdom, eBay is a great location to offer these kinds of rare pieces. Our clients and buyers love the fact there is no 10% buyer's premium too, means more funds to spend on the auction item.

We sold the Rush Limbaugh - Harry Reid letter there for $2.1 million, the highest price ever achieved for a modern document. We have an active base of high net worth individuals who often make purchases from us.

SJG: At that price any serious collector will want to personally view it before committing to buy. What arrangements do you have for previewing the List?

EG: Yes, the winner will be able to see the List in person in Israel while his/her funds are in an escrow account and can bring along their expert.

SJG: If you have no bidders what's your next step?

EG: We have a few interested parties that may or may not bid, and if it ends without them bidding, we will be continuing the purchase discussions with them.

SJG: What sort of business do you have? What do you trade in?

EG: My company is a high profile auction management agency. We help mainly celebrities, charities, corporate brands, TV shows, and individuals with unique auction offerings which need design, promotion, bidder screening, logistic services, research, and consulting. Personally, I love historical items, rare books, and other paper pieces. We are always happy to assist a collector looking for a non traditional auction house alternative.

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So, there you have it. Schindler's Original List, yours for only $3,000,000, private sale pending upon negotiation. When you can sell a letter from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Limbaugh's boss, Mark P. Mays, CEO of Clear Channel Communications, excoriating Limbaugh for intemperate comments (read it here), and co-signed by forty-one Democratic senators for $2.1 million, all of a sudden $3 mil for an original of Schindler's List doesn't seem an insane price, nor eBay an inane place for rare books and historical paper from a respectable, high-end dealer..

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Images courtesy of Gazin Auctions, with our thanks.
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The Autobiography Of God

by Stephen J. Gertz

Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1937.

"The vast sweep of history from the days of Abraham down to Hitler and the coronation of George VI of England in 1937 is portrayed as seen by Yahweh himself, the chief actor in the episodes that have shaped the modern world...a novel of great audacity" (Dust jacket blurb).

Ai, ai, ai, I, Yahweh! Great audacity, indeed.

Now, you can call me Yah or you can call me El; you can call me Elah or you can call me Eloah; you can call me HaShem or you can call me Adoshem; you can call me Jah or you can call me Jehovah but you doesn't have to call me Yahweh! In fact, I find it annoying. Adonai will do just fine. Like James Baldwin, nobody knows my name. In my case let's keep it that way.

Addressing me by my first name is simply rude. Maybe it's an American thing, breaking down class distinctions by leveling the playing field with informality. But if you were introduced to George Washington would you say, "Hey, George, nice t'meet'cha. Waz happ'nin?'" followed by a fist-bump? Of course not; you'd be awestruck. But you don't hesitate to dis me, treating me like we're old pals. Jumpin' Jehosephat! Did anybody - besides his wife, in private - dare to call Don Corleone "Vito?"  So, what am I, chopped liver?

It's Mr. Yahweh to you. Better yet, I Am That I Am (אהיה אשר אהיה), but if you insist upon being a boor call me Big Daddy. Or, since we're in the 21st century, Big Data: the invisible know-it-all in the cloud with a host of servers to do my bidding.

First of all, I did not "write" this book nor did I will it into existence. It's a case of identity theft. The first paragraph is a dead giveaway.

"I know not whose prayer gave rise to my being. Who, indeed, can remember the circumstances of his begetting? I recall only the mighty solitude of the world wherein first I found myself There was a great plain which lay round about the city of Ur in ancient Chaldea. Thither do my earliest memories return."

What? Thither doth my displeasure begin, and, please, begone the stilted language. I needed mankind to pray me into existence? Gimme a break. I was here before, I'm here now, I'll be here later, long after humanity bites the dust and returns to it. And, what, I have no memories before humanity came on the scene? Skip the ontology; I AM, that's all you need to know, and I remember more than Sammy "the Bull" Gravano testifying against John "the Dapper Don" Gotti.

Check this out, from chapter seven: "From that time forth, forasmuch as I had entered somewhat into the temporal province, Constantine entered more freely into the spiritual. And I took it it not amiss until that day when he said unto me, 'Yahweh, it is made increasingly plain that we must have thee defined.'

"'Defined, sayest thou?' I queried." The nerveth of this guy! I refuse to be pigeonholed. Everybody says I'm unknowable, beyond comprehension - and I am - but that hasn't stopped anyone from determining what they think I want. I'm a mystery without a solution, a Raymond Chandler novel with plot that makes no sense. My challenge to mankind is not to feel secure but to be able to live with insecurity without going insane.

What do I want? I'm not talking; gotta keep you flesh and blood folks on your toes.

I'm pleased to report that this book, a  turkey in the form of an autobiography, has not received a single review on Library Thing, Good Reads, or Amazon. It is, apparently, considered to be one of the ten plagues of Egypt and something to avoid, a toss-up between boils and pestilence. It is forgotten and for good reason. "Friends will find much to ponder on in this book, which is told in the first person by no less than Jehovah, Yahweh, God of the Hebrews. The idea is more startling than the book." So sayeth T. Morris Longstreet in 1939, reviewing the book (two years after its publication, yet!) for the Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association. It needs all the friends it can get, Quaker or otherwise.

Need I add that I have nothing to do with Yahweh.com, the online House of Me? Talk about chutzpah! My Domain is mine and mine alone but try telling that to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). I complained. I said, "I'm Yahweh." Guy says to me, "Right, and I'm Dagon, don't bust my chops." Philistines.

So, enough of this phoney-baloney autobiography of Me. Oy, Yahweh! It's a hoax.

So say I, Clifford Irving.

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GREY, Robert Munson. I, Yahweh. Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1937. First edition. Octavo. [8], 352 pp. Cloth.. Dust jacket.

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Three Visually Arresting Modernist Judaica Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

Designer Unknown.
"M". c. 1931.

We revisit the Swann Galleries Modernist Poster sale held May 13, 2013.

The linocut poster above is for the original release of film director Fritz Lang's "M" at the Moghrabi Theatre (built in 1930) in Tel Aviv.

After a distinguished career during the silent film era, Lang's first talkie - considered to be his best film - starred Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a hunted, haunted by "this evil thing inside me" child murderer who whistles Grieg's ominous In the Hall of the Mountain King when approaching his prey. 

Due to the lurid nature of film's subject matter Lang, who had made his films at the celebrated and artistically influential German studio, UFA (Universum Film AG), worked with Nero Films for this movie to deflect the political pressure bearing down upon him from UFA, a government-supported entity. When sound arrived UFA routinely released versions of major films in several languages. Given that Jews were  persecuted in Germany soon after the movie's release and, later, exterminated wherever Nazis found them, it is fascinating to learn that UFA felt the need to release a version in Hebrew to cater to the audience in then Palestine. It was strictly a financial decision. With the advent of sound movies and language barriers the studio could no longer depend on easy distribution and box-office receipts throughout the world.

Designer unknown.

This same, stark image of a hand, emblazoned with a red "M," appeared on the original German poster but did not have the repeating motif of the letter against the background.

Abram Games (1914-1996).
Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry. 1945.

As a Jew who had been exposed to Nazi atrocities through British war films, Abram Games (1914-1996) was in a unique position to be able to channel his horror in a manner which could potentially assist the decimated Jewish communities of Europe. His Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry (1945) starkly and dramatically captures the desperate plight of concentration camp survivors. (Abram Games: His Life and Work, fig 219).

Abram Games, one of the twentieth century's most influential British graphic designers, believed in using the simplest possible design to create the greatest possible impact.

Beginning as a commercial artist, when WWII broke out he was recruited as an Official War Artist and in that capacity designed over a hundred posters, later creating the symbols of the BBC and the Festival of Britain.

He experimented with "unusual juxtapositions of illustration and typography. Games strove to ensure that his wartime posters were as striking and seductive as the best commercial art.

The "Blonde Bombshell."

"Sometimes Games’ work was deemed too seductive, notably the glamorous ATS girl dubbed the 'Blonde Bombshell' which was criticized by the House of Commons for being too glamorous. Games favored stark, simple and, therefore, all the more arresting images produced by sticking to his philosophy of deriving 'maximum meaning' from 'minimum means'" (Design Museum).

Abram Games (1914-1996)
DP / Over 200,000 Displaced Jews Look To You. 1946.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Games designed "posters which demanded, rather than appealed to, the Jewish public to give aid to the refugees . . . [In Displaced Persons] two eyes stare out of the initials DP with an appalling urgency; the vestige of a face an embodiment of despair. The lettering underneath . . . is by contrast plain and tiny: no words are really necessary. This is Games at his most powerful" (Abram Games: His Life and Work, p. 177, and fig. 220).  

“All Abram Games’ designs were recognizably his own. They had vigor, imagination, passion and individuality...And he was lucky - and clever - in contriving, over a long and creative working life, to keep on doing what he did best” (David Gentleman).
 

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Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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The Most Notorious Publisher In American History

by Stephen J. Gertz

He stood at the crossroads of Modernism and censorship, twentieth century literature, copyright law, and cultural history. He introduced America to James Joyce's Ulysses, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen, Alfred Jarry's The Garden of Priapus, etc. He also published Loose Shoulder Straps by "Alain Dubois" aka poet, litterateur, and author of The Rhyming Dictionary, Clement Wood; Padlocks and Girdles of Chastity by Alcide Bonneau (1928); Sacred Prostitution and Marriage By Capture (1932); Lady Chatterley's Husbands (1931, written by Antony Gudaitis, aka Tony Gud);  and the famed homoerotic novel, A Scarlet Pansy (1932 deluxe issue, by "Robert Scully," almost surely poet Robert McAlmon, with a 1933 trade edition). He edited and published Two Worlds, a hardbound literary quarterly whose contributing editors were Arthur Symons, Ezra Pound, and Ford Maddox Ford. He was a master of mail-order book sales. The list of imprints he established is as long as a leg. He was Jean Valjean to New York Society For the Supression of Vice leader John S. Sumner's Javert. He spent nine years in jail on state and federal obscenity convictions. He gave his name to a  key Supreme Court 1st Amendment decision. Samuel Roth's personal and professional activities - they were one and the same - ultimately allowed Americans to read whatever they wanted to; his sacrifice at the Court in 1957 made it safe for U.S. citizens to buy legal American copies of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1958 and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch in 1959 without Mrs. Grundy at their door with SWAT team and incinerator.

Roth, at right, in his Poetry Book Shop, Greenwich Village 1920.

"Samuel Roth…was a man of considerable culture. Some of the material he sold was trash; some of it was unquestionably literature" (Charles Rembar). He believed that "reading is itself is a great good, any kind of reading is better than no reading and some people will read only rather low material, which I am willing to supply" (Samuel Roth, as paraphrased by his attorney, Charles Rembar, in his The End of Obscenity).

Sam Roth (1893-1974), if he is remembered at all, is infamous for his literary piracies. After he serially published twelve excerpts from Joyce's Ulysses without authorization in Two Worlds, Sylvia Beach, who had published the first edition of Ulysses in Paris, at Joyce's behest organized an international protest in 1927 against Roth with 167 internationally respected intellectuals and artists signing the document, including Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and Albert Einstein. He was immediately vilified. This incident has deeply scarred Roth's legacy. Jay A. Gertzman, with evidence not available to earlier scholars, makes a strong case for reappraising Samuel Roth's guilt, both legal and ethical, in a new and definitive biography.

Issue 1, No. 1, December, 1925.

Gertzman, who in his Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-1940 (1999), exposed the edgy world of the clandestine, East Coast-U.S. publication of sexually-themed literature, has now, after at least fifteen years of research, published this long-awaited biography of Roth, Samuel Roth: Infamous Modernist, the first deeply researched, full-length investigation of the man and his milieu.

Samuel Roth.

Grade C-Z moviemakers were once consigned to Gower Gulch, a low-rent, run-down section of Hollywood near the major studios but a light year distant from their  superior quality; it was also known as Poverty Row. Brazen upstarts, outsiders, and finaglers with ambition but little money and desperate to distribute their product through a system dominated by the big studios vied for the eyeballs of movie-goers. New York publishers short on cash but long on brash found themselves in similar circumstances. Being proudly Jewish and thus not well-connected to or well-perceived by book publishing's elitist, gentile power-centers didn't help. Having a constitutional attraction to literature, modern and classical, fiction  and non-fiction that defied contemporary moral standards was certainly a disadvantage. A strong anti-authoritarian streak and determination to publish and accept the consequences (but not without a fight) in concert with a fundamental aversion to censorship in a free society only made matters worse. Being a blatant huckster came with the territory; publishing was a Darwinian business. Easily victimized, you did what you had to do to survive. Roth, a downtown publisher with uptown aspirations, was all of these things, and a writer, too, a brilliant Columbia graduate with artistic pretensions and a voice for self-pity. Born in Galacia, he was raised on New York's Lower East Side, where chutzpah was sliced thick and Roth's portion super-sized.

Roth's mug shot, 1930, upon beginning his two-month prison
sentence for selling copies of Joyce's Ulysses in Philadelphia.

An outsider to begin with, the Ulysses controversy made him an outcast, a  pariah for his sin as "desecrater of literary expression." Gertzman carefully mounts a strong case that Roth was not the philistine he has been made out to be. 

• Roth did not "pirate" Ulysses. Because of a clause in contemporary U.S. copyright law written to protect the domestic printing trade, books that were not printed on an American-based press were not granted copyright protection. Ulysses was, within the U.S., in the public domain. Blame Congress.

• There is evidence that Joyce and Roth's mutual friend, Ezra Pound, acting as Joyce's literary agent, gave Roth the go-ahead, and that arrangements for payment had been made.

• Joyce's outrage was disingenuous. While sincerely trying to protect his image as avant-garde genius he was also a shrewd businessman not without keen commercial instincts. The furor of his friends and supporters was exaggerated. Edited excerpts of Ulysses had been previously published and no one complained about it. A managed protest could only increase awareness and build demand for the book's ultimate legal publication in full in the United States (Random House, 1934). Genius aesthete versus greedy capitalist barbarian always makes a good story.

• Joyce's concern that sales of the Beach edition of the book would be hurt by Roth's excerpts to a broad audience (Roth wanted his publications bought by the average man on the street; his overriding goal was to popularize literature of all kinds and get it to the hinterlands) was groundless and something of a canard. With its limited press run and price the Beach edition was never meant or expected to attract a broad readership beyond wealthy collectors.

Gertzman goes on in depth and what we take away is that there is plenty of blame to spread amongst the actors in this bit of literary theater. Roth was not a boogey-man. He was, to a large degree, the perfect scapegoat.

Sketch, undoubtedly by Mahlon Blaine, for an advertisement.

Are you aware that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a memoir concerning his incestuous relationship with his sister, Elisabeth? In 1951 Roth published My Sister and I (NY: Boar's Head) based upon a manuscript in Nietzsche's hand that fell into Roth's possession in 1924. Its first edition went through fourteen printings. He initially advertised its publication in 1924 but ran out of money (Roth never got rich publishing anything, much less Ulysses, and was always in a financial bind of some sort). After a raid on Roth's offices by John S. Sumner in 1929 the manuscript was thought lost. It resurfaced during a 1940s inventory. Real or apocryphal Nietzsche? Gertzman presents the critical arguments, strong on both sides. The jury remains out.

Roth was a big cat who, when wounded, roared and attacked, a Lion of Judah. He was a "steadfast Jew and Zionist...who became so distressed by what he felt was lack of support from his co-religionists that he, after claiming to be instructed by Jesus in a vision, wrote Jews Must Live: An Account of the Persecution of the World by Israel on All Frontiers of Civilization, a vicious 325-page anti-Semitic tract that was used by Nazis for propaganda and is kept in print by right-wing white-supremacist groups today" (Michael Bronski).

NY: Golden Hind Press, 1934.

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Thrill of the Trade Department:  around ten years ago I had Roth's personal copy of another publisher's piracy of A Scarlet Pansy (NY: Nesor [Rosen, backwards], 1937) pass through my hands. Within, Roth made penciled revisions, cuts, and expurgations for his planned reissue (NY: Royal, 1940). The book also possessed subsequent annotations by sexual folklorist and bibliographer Gershon Legman, who worked for Roth during the 1930s, recording what Roth was up to with this book, from Legman's library, acquired directly from his widow, Judith. I felt as if I was sitting next to Roth as he worked on the book. Thanks, GL.

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Roth lost his 1957 appeal to the Supreme Court to vacate his 1956 conviction for obscenity; he went to jail. But he won the war. The Court's Constitutional test in Roth v. United States - that for a work to be judged obscene its "dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest" of the "average person, applying contemporary community standards" without any redeeming social value whatsoever opened the door to soft-porn. Soon, "redeeming social value" could be found in anything no matter how hard-core, particularly if publishers hired medical professionals or literary critics (real or otherwise) to write prefaces explaining why Doing It With Dad and Brother Dan While Mom Sings Hawaiian War Chant presents an intimate family interpersonal dynamic with deep psychological insight into the human condition and a penetrating sociological view of the exotic byways of love in an All-American metropolis, thus saving it from  Vice Squad condemnation.

Scholars and citizens with an interest in modern literature and the struggle for frank expression and publication of  candid material in a free society will be captivated by Samuel Roth: Infamous Modernist. I believe every library should own a copy; it's a must-acquire. For those fascinated by the shadow world of clandestine publishing and modern lit. in the U.S. it's a must-read.

But it's not a free read; you have to pay for it and that's how it should be. Yet at $74.95 it may be a bit too un-free. Issued by University Press of Florida it's a case study of what has gone so wrong with university press and books-on-books publishing. While the volume is very attractive its production quality is not what you'd expect from a book costing $75. And the $75 cost is likely connected to its print run, which, given the current state of the market (dismal), cannot have been more than 500 copies.

I can't help but think that if Roth were alive and the publisher, the book would have been issued as a fine trade paperback for $25 in an initial print-run of 2,000 copies and distributed via mail order and through every newsstand location in the country with accompanying hard-sell suggestive and sensational hoopla and ballyhoo using every free marketing tool available to spread the word that this is a sizzler, a book the major publishers found too hot to handle, an important book on American literary and publishing history about the man who died so that Ulysses, Casanova Jr.'s Tales, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Pageant of Lust, and The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover Under Two Flags (Roth's best-selling exposé of President Herbert Hoover, 1931) could live, and made it possible for the huddled masses to not only breathe but read free.

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GERTZMAN, Jay A. Samuel Roth: Infamous Modernist.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. xxviii, 387, [1] pp. Illustrations throughout. Illustrated boards. $74.95. Release: 4/23/2013.

UPDATE: 
A PRE-PUBLICATION DISCOUNT ($30 total) HAS BEEN EXTENDED THROUGH JUNE: Order online at http://www.upf.com/ book.asp?id=GERTZ001
This link will appear as: University Press of Florida: Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface

Chapter One: 1893-1916: From a Galician Shtetl to Columbia University.

Chapter Two: 1917-1925: Prelude to an International Protest: A Rising, Pugnacious Man of Letters.

Chapter Three: 1925-27: “Damn his impertinence. Bloody Crook”: Roth Publishes Joyce.

Chapter Four: 1928-34: Roth Must Live: A Successful Business and Its Bankruptcy.

Chapter Five : 1934: Jews Must Live. “We Meet Our Destiny on the Road We Take To Avoid It”

Chapter Six 1934-39: A Stretch in the Federal Penitentiary.

Chapter Seven: 1940-1949: Roth Breaks Parole, Uncovers a Nazi Plot, Gives “Dame Post Office” Fits, and Tells His Own Story in Mail Order Advertising Copy.

Chapter Eight: 1949-1952: Times Square, Peggy Roth, Southern Gothic, Celine, and Nietzsche.

Chapter Nine: 1952-57: The Windsors, Winchell, Kefauver: Back to Lewisburg.

Chapter Ten: 1958-74: “It Had Been a Long Time since Someone Like You Had Appeared In the World”: Roth Fulfills his Mission.

Appendix: Samuel Roth’s Imprints and Business Names.

Bibliography.

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Other books by Jay A. Gertzman:

A Descriptive Bibliography of Lady Chatterley's Lover. With Essays Toward a Publishing History of the Novel.

Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-1940. 
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Full Disclosure: Mr. Gertzman and I are friends, and he kindly acknowledges me in the book as a source, however modest my contribution - and it was, indeed, very modest.

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Image of My Sister and I advertisement courtesy of Mr. Gertzman's website, with our thanks.
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Beware Of Jewish Doctors, 1937 Edition

by Stephen J. Gertz

The American Medical Association and the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association come under attack in this thinly-veiled anti-Semitic rant in the form of a allegorical farce in dialogue published in 1937.

The characters who converse include Dr. Gil T. Conscience ("A little too honest to be a successful doctor"), Dr. Buryem Atta Profit ("In partnership with Mr. Undertaker"), Dr. Cuttem Upp ("A versatile surgeon cutting for money"), Dr. Smarty ("Talks too much and tells secrets of the American Meddlers Association"),  Dr. Skinnem Alive ("His scruples never interfere with his money-making"), Dr. Pop Off (" A free-thinker - resigned from the American Meddlers Association"), Dr. Getsum Moore ("A very frugal person with his eye on the money"), the Milo Brothers ("Owners of a great money-making hospital," i.e. the Mayo Clinic), and the Hebrew harbinger of all ill-health and medical hooey, Dr. Morey Fishback Kike ("A notorious quack and leader of the American Meddlers Association").

Dr. Kike is the thinly-veiled Dr. Morris Fishbein (1889-1976), editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association 1924-1950, founding Editor of Medical World News (1961), fierce crusader against medical quackery, and strong proponent of regulating medical devices, too many of which were useless yet heavily promoted cures for cancer and all manner of medical woe. For this, he was excoriated by fringe medicos, snake-oil charlatans, and desperate citizens willing to believe anything that promised them relief, no matter how hocus-pocus, unproven, and medical-sounding the malarkey. Evidenced-based medicine was the enemy, and the AMA a corrupt, hook-nosed medical-political machine that needed to be crushed if the profession was to remain open to new, promising therapies no matter how broken the promise, how gimcrack the gizmo.

There is, of course, no anti-Semitism intended in this scurrilous little pamphlet. It's only a coincidence that Dr. Kike is circumcised, has a Jewish-sounding name, and invites low ethnic epithet. To make sure readers understand her pure intent, Ms. Rogers, a naturopath, offers the following disingenuous defense in the Preface:

"Because the villain in this story happens to be a Jew, I do not wish to leave the impression that there is anything wrong with the Jewish people - their honesty, their integrity, or their methods of doing business. I am only using the term American Meddlers Association, because I have heard this term used in an amusing and interesting manner. As far as I know, there is no such association. Because the villain on this story happens to be a Jew whom I have heard called Dr. Morey Fishback Kike, does not mean that there is such a person."

In sum, it's the rich, money-grubbing Jewish doctors of the AMA who are putting the nation at risk, not good guys like Royal Rife, the microscoptician and electrical engineer who dreamed up a high-frequency emission machine that safely zapped cancer to death. Only it didn't. So the AMA banned it, thus insuring that they would be associated by some with the destruction of an innocent genius who got in its way and the snuffing-out of a medical entrepreneur whose only crime was innovation, not peddling false hope to the desperate. Think Laetrile.

Despite its defamatory nature, American  Meddlers Association was so highly regarded that during the 41st Congress of the American Naturopath Association one of the featured speakers ceded to Esther Rogers his time to address the assembly.

Full disclosure: I was, as a child, one of Dr. Fishbein's star medical students. His Handy Home Medical Advisor (1957) was my bible when seeking an innocuous yet serious-enough childhood ailment whose symptoms I could reasonably fake and get out of school for a day, a week, a month, and, in one case, four months - a miracle of modern medical science:

Based upon careful study of his description I successfully feigned infectious mononucleosis as a ten year old fourth-grader, so successfully that when tested by my pediatrician I actually had infectious mononucleosis. Dr. Fishbein was a genius, and I suspect that I was not the only kid who got through childhood by earning a Ph.D in Pre-Pubescent, Pubescent, and Adolescent Medical Truancy and Malingering while under his tutelage. He was a medical meddler only in the eyes of my parents. To me, he was Doc Marvel, The Man Who Made School Stop.

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ROGERS, Esther. American Meddlers Association... Ethical -- Ultra-ethical! Kansass City, MO: Esther Rogers, 1937. First edition. Octavo. 32 pp. Original yellow-orange wrappers.

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Image courtesy of Garrett Scott, the Bibliophagist, currently offering this item, with our thanks.

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Just Say Da: Unique Rare Books With Original Russian Watercolors At Auction

By Stephen J. Gertz

Original watercolor by Georges Kars Kralupy for David Golder.

Lots to love at Christie's in its upcoming Fine Books and Manuscripts sale at London-South Kensington June 19, 2012.

Lot 192 is a singleton. a richly illustrated first edition copy of Iréne Némirovsky's (1903-1942) David Golder (Paris: 1929) featuring sixty-seven original watercolors by artist Georges Kars Kralupy (1882-1945).

Némirovsky is primarily known as the author of Suite Française, duet novels portraying life in France between June 4, 1940 and July 1, 1941, the period in which the Nazis occupied Paris.

After the author's death in Auschwitz the manuscript of  Suite Française was kept by her eldest daughter for fifty years until it was donated to a French archive that had it published: it became a bestseller in 2004. The present copy is no. 56 of a limited edition of 100 copies and is inscribed  by the artist to Robert Ellissen.

Original watercolor by Hermine David for Gourmont's Oeuvres.

Next up, lot 193 is a unique copy of the limited edition of Remy de Gourmont's (1858-1915) Oeuvres (Paris: 1930) elegantly illustrated with ninety-eight original watercolors by Hermine David (1886-1970). It, too, is inscribed to Robert Ellissen by the artist.

A trend is developing...

Is it the woman or the moon? It's both, lot 194, another unique and superbly illustrated book, no. 12 of a limited edition of only eighteen copies of Gil Robin's (1893-1967) novel Le Femme et la Lune (Paris: 1925).

It features sixty-eight original watercolors by Sonia Lewitska (1874-1937). 

Yet again, it is inscribed, here to Mme. Robert Ellissen by Lewitska.

Original watercolor by Alice Halicka for Tragédies de Ghetto.

Finally, artist Alice Halicka (1895-1975) illustrated lot 195, a copy of Israel Zangwill's (1864-1926) Tragédies du Ghetto (Paris: 1928), with fifty-seven original watercolors.

You guessed it: inscribed by the artist to Robert Ellissen.

Who were the Ellissens and how did they manage to get the artists to devote their time and talent to illustrate these books for them?

Robert Ellissen was the author of Le Gaz dans la vie moderne (1933); Les villes et l'Etat contre l'industrie privée (1908); Le Concours Sartine 1763-1766 (1922), and a translator. He and his wife were art patrons who befriended and aided the Russian and Eastern European artist-exiles who had emigrated to Paris to escape the anti-Semitism in their homelands, settled in Montparnasse, and established the 1918-1939 Judaic aspect of the Ecole de Paris, its heyday the 'Twenties.

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Stunning 18th Century Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript Comes To Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

On Thursday, June 21, 2012, Kestenbaum & Company, auctioneers, is offering a  stellar collection of rare Judaica with many luminaries, not the least of which is a beautiful 18th century illuminated Haggadah, the Passover prayer book, with pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations,  by the scribe Nathaniel ben Aaron Segal. Created in Hamburg in 1757, it is estimated to sell for $30,000-$40,000.

Note Ashkenasy square script.

In Hebrew with instructions in Yiddish, it is composed upon thick parchment and written in Ashkenazi square and waybertaysch (women's Yiddish) scripts with the text following the traditional Ashkenazi rites.

Known as the "Lilien" Hagadah, it is part of the collection of the Polish-Jewish artist and early Zionist Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874-1925), who is considered to be the leader in developing Zionism's artistic vision in the early 20th century. Owned by the family for nearly a century, the book was, for a period of time, loaned to the Bezalel National Museum in Jerusalem and was on prominent display in the Monumenta Judaica exhibition of 1963-64 in Cologne, Germany.

Bookplate of Ephraim Moses Lilien.

Nathaniel, the son of Aaron Segal, was a sofer starn - a scribe of Torah scrolls, phylacteries, and mezzuzahs - actively working 1757-1772 in Altona, Hamberg, and Wandsbeck. He is firmly credited with six illuminated manuscripts (four Haggadahs and two Mohel (circumcision practitioner) books.

Why, three hundred years after Gutenberg, were Hebrew books still being copied in manuscript and illuminated? It was an art form not to be discarded; examples survive from the 10th century Muslim community and scholarship suggests that Hebrew illuminated manuscripts date back to the ancient world. They reached their apex in Renaissance Italy, then began to decline as demand and the number of artisans dwindled.

Yet "a new phase in the development of decorated Hebrew manuscripts emerged in the 18th century in Germany and Central Europe, when wealthy Court Jews commissioned handwritten and painted books as luxury items. Many of these are personal prayer books, which include Haggadot, seder berakhot, seder tikkunei Shabbat, and seder brit milah. Some of these manuscripts were intended as wedding presents for brides and contain contemporary depictions of women. Many of the Haggadot were inspired by the printed edition of the Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695. Other features that reveal the influence of printed books are the inclusion of a decorated title page or the indication that the manuscript was written using otiot Amsterdam, the style of letters utilized for Amsterdam imprints, even though the book was written elsewhere" (Evelyn Cohen, Illuminated Manuscripts, Hebrew. Ecylopaedia Judaica, 2d ed.).

BTW: The star attraction in this auction is a copy of the Ferrara Bible, published in 1553. It is estimated to sell for $30,000-$50,000.

One of the great landmarks in printing, the Ferrara Bible is the first printed translation into Ladino, the  Judaeo-Spanish language, of the entire Tanakh, the Hebrew BIble (Old Testament).

Its publication was the work of Marrano Jews (New Christians) who brought the Spanish language with them after the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492 and had settled in Ferrara in northern Italy, which had a Jewish population as early as the 13th century. These Marranos, who had converted to Christianity strictly to successfully function in Spain, and, post-1492, to stay alive, returned to Judaism after their expulsion.

This translation, based upon earlier medieval Castilian versions, became the canon for the Sephardim (Spanish Jews) of Europe to whom matzoh balls are unknown. As we say in Yiddish,  Oy caramba.

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Images courtesy of Kestenbaum & Co., with our thanks.
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Magnificent 15th C. Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript Estimated $540K - $800K

By Stephen J. Gertz

Cantor pointing to The Book of Life, opening Yom Kippur.

A mahzor, or Jewish holiday prayerbook, an illuminated manuscript in Hebrew on vellum from Tuscany (likely Florence), c. 1490s, is being offered by Christie's - Paris on May 11, 2012. It is estimated to sell for €400,000 - €600,000 ($540,000 - $800,000).

Ark of the Covenant, with men teaching in the synagogue below.

It is magnificently illuminated in the characteristic style of Giovanni di Giuliano Boccardi, known as Boccardino il vecchio (Boccardino the Old, 1460-1529) and considered one of the last representatives of the golden age of Florentine renaissance illumination. His princely clients included Lorenzo de' Medici "Il Magnifico," and Matthias Corvinus

Leaf with illuminated border and headpiece.

While Boccardino's work dominates the first sixty-eight leaves, subsequent illuminations were completed by followers or members of his workshop after Boccadino's designs.

Frontispiece with border medallions.
Note coat of arms in lower panel, flanked by cherubs.

The Jewish community of Florence flourished in the 15th-century, their position closely linked to the fortunes of the de' Medici. Lorenzo il magnifico was their protector; he encouraged Jewish scholarship and scholars. It is, then, unsurprising that Jewish patrons of this Mahzor solicited an artist who worked for Lorenzo for this luxury manuscript. While Christian Florentines illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, this Mahzor appears to be the only example  illuminated by Boccardino.

Mose holding the tablets of the law.

Raising of the Passover Seder basket.

The coat of arms bears resemblance to the Ambron family but coats of arms used by Jewish families were inventions, not official, and variable, employing traditional Jewish symbols. Positive identification is difficult. The manuscript's 16th century binding bears a central medallion combining elements of the armorial devices of various Italian noble families, including the Tedeschi and Uzielli of Tuscany

Leaf with illuminated initial and vignette.

A couple in bed.

The Sabbath meal.

Containing prayers for the entire Jewish liturgical year, the Mahzor  includes: blessing of the Name of the Lord; a hundred blessings to be recited daily; blessing for the Lord; the recitation of Shema and prayers to be said before retiring to bed; for the Sabbath;  for the blessing for a new moon;  for Hanukkah with extracts from the Book of Esther; prayers to be said before reading the Megillah; for Passover;  before the fast of Tammuz, followed by prayers for the fast of the Ninth of Av and relating to the Book of Lamentations, followed by prayers and Psalms; prayers for Rosh Hashanah; for Yom Kippur; for Sukkoth; Tsam'a Nafshi, the 12th-century poem by Abraham ibn Ezra, the author's name picked out acrostically in the margin; and commentary on the death of Moses in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Leaf with illuminated vignette.

This mahzor was still in Italy early in the 17th century when it was seen by the Christian censors Fra Hippolytus of Ferrara and Camillo Jagel who signed the final leaf, in 1601 and 1611(?). An inserted note records the purchase of the manuscript in Frankfurt before 1908. It was published in London, 1930, in Adler's Jewish Travellers, when it was in the possession of E. Bicart-Sée in Paris and then by descent to the present family owners.

Binding, lower board.

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MAHZOR. Tuscany (Florence?), c.1490s. Small octavo (6.61 x 4.9 inches; 168 x 125 mm). ii, 442 leaves, apparently complete with catchwords on final versos of many gatherings, some signature still visible, foliation every 10 leaves includes front flyleaves and is followed here, 20 lines of Italian semi-cursive script in black ink, with vowel points, rubrics in smaller script mostly in red or blue, Hebrew square script for initial words, prayers for Yom Kippur highlighted in gold, initial word panels throughout in burnished gold on red, green or blue grounds, some embellished with marginal sprays, text illustrations including the Matzah and Maror, FRONTISPIECE WITH FULL-PAGE BORDER INCORPORATING MEDALLIONS WITH PROFILE HEADS, LANDSCAPE VIGNETTES AND THE COAT OF ARMS OF THE ORIGINAL OWNER, two openings with similar single panel borders and a two-sided floral border on a vellum ground, TWO SMALL, TWO HALF-PAGE AND FOUR FULL-PAGE MINIATURES, two of them with full-page borders incorporating coats of arms, edges gilt and gauffered (occasional light losses of pigment or gold, some unobtrusive smudging or offsetting, a few marginal creases, some fading of ink, particularly to final leaf).

Mid 16th-century Italian gold-tooled dark brown goatskin over thin wooden boards with strapwork painted in red and yellow, both covers with central cartouche with coat of arms, elaborately decorated with a unicorn and rabbit, hatched leaf and flower tools, solid dots and foliate rolls, evidence of two fore-edge clasps, four nail holes at edge of cartouche, (rebacked, repaired at board edges, paint rubbed, clasps missing).

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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