Auction house Sotheby’s will be auctioning off what it calls “Important Judaica” beginning June 5th.
The lot includes a large number of rare and valuable artifacts from across the Jewish world. among the items, Sotheby’s said:
* An Isidor Kaufmann portrait of a rabbi with a young pupil, valued at $220,000
* An elaborately illustrated ketubah (marriage certificate) from Corfu, dating from 1796
* A silver-gilt hanging Shabbat lamp, from 18th century Germany, which is expected to fetch between $600,000 and $800,000.
* A pair of large Dutch parcel-gilt silver and filigree Torah finials (Hedde Buys of Shoonhoven, 1845)
* A pair of unusual English silver “chinoiserie” Torah finials, (John Robins, London, 1803)
* A collection of nearly 300 picture postcards of resorts in the Catskills area of New York, famously popular among Jews of New York between the 1940’s and 1970’s. Informally known as the “Borscht Belt” and the “Jewish Alps,” the Catskills were frequented every summer and during Jewish festivals by New York Jews, as antisemitism prevented them from vacationing elsewhere.
“Many of the postcards advertise all the different amenities on offer during this period, from sports facilities to the many forms of entertainment available,” noted The Jerusalem Post. “The 1987 film Dirty Dancing, as well as the second season of Amazon’s award-winning 1950s-set comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, reflect on this era of American Jewish history.”
The upcoming auction is only one of several such auctions of Judaica that has been offered by the renowned auction house. In December, Sotheby’s presented a ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) dating from 1884 in Kingston, Jamaica. Officials said that while it regularly offers ketubot in its auctions, such a document from Jamaica is a first for the auction house and – it believes – the auction world as a whole, according to the Post.
The document “solemnized the marriage of David ben Abraham Nunes Henriques and Amy bat Alfred Delgado in Kingston on August 14, 1884, according to Sotheby’s. The auction house said the bride’s grandfather, Moses Delgado, was a significant figure in Jamaica’s Jewish community, and one of the leaders of the movement to grant full civil rights to Jews in the former British colony,” the paper added.
Earlier in 2018, Sotheby’s presented another trove of Jewish items. “A Sotheby’s auction is a forum of pure exchange, where the prices are so astronomical, and spent with such astounding speed, that they stop corresponding to any conceivable earthly value. The difference between a $15,000 pair of 18th-century Torah finials and a $20,000 pair of 18th-century Torah finials, sold within minutes of each other, is hopelessly abstract, although obviously the difference is also pretty concrete, namely $5,000,” Tablet magazine suggested. “Paying a quarter-million bucks for a single book, even a very beautiful or rare one, is an absurdity when you really get down to it, and yet at a Sotheby’s auction the coffee, and the drama, both come free of charge.”