Among the items that auction house Kestenbaum and Company plans to sell on Nov. 18 are an uncut copy of the Maryland “Jew Bill,” the first “comprehensive” mahzor set printed in America, the first kosher cookbook in English and the late 16th century papal order to destroy the Talmud—items which range in estimated cost from a few thousand dollars to $30,000 each.
In Maryland, a “protracted struggle” sought to afford political equality to Jews, according to the auction house.
“Maryland’s first constitution, passed in 1776, retained a colonial statute requiring all public servants to invoke a Christological oath. Not only were governmental officials and members of the legislature considered public servants, but so were lawyers, military officers and jurors,” it stated. “Thus, a Jew was deprived of a possible livelihood, opportunities to demonstrate his loyalty and trial by his peers.”
Though Jews protested that “inferior status” starting in 1797, it took until 1826 when the state legislature passed the “Jew Bill.” The 1829 copy, uncut and in the publisher’s cloth-backed boards, is estimated to fetch between $6,000 and $9,000 and includes speeches from some of the strongest advocates for Jews.
“Despite the fact that it was a state issue, the impact of the Jew Bill extended well beyond Maryland,” the auction house stated. “It caught the young nation’s attention and reverberated overseas.”
The Kestenbaum sale will also include what it calls an “exceptionally rare” set of mahzors, prayer books for holidays, which is the first “comprehensive” one printed in America, published in 1837 and 1838, and a medal with 19 engravings made in Germany around 1738 to mock Joseph Oppenheimer, a Court Jew, after his execution. The mahzors and the medal are estimated to go for $20,000 to $30,000 each.
Another offering is what Kestenbaum refers to as the first book that a Jew published in North America, a 1735 work on Hebrew grammar. Judah Monis, who descended from Portuguese conversos and who wrote the book ($5,000-$7,000), moved to New York City around 1715 and then moved to Boston, per the auction house.
Monis was baptized in Boston on March 27, 1722, and he became Harvard College’s first Hebrew teacher soon thereafter. He resigned from that role in 1760, according to the auction house. “Already by 1720, Monis had completed a first draft of the grammar textbook he would eventually use to teach Hebrew at Harvard,” it said. “Because of a lack of funds and sufficient Hebrew type, however, the book was not published until 1735.”
The book went on to “serve generations of students at Harvard and other institutions of higher learning in New England,” it said.
The auction also includes what Kestenbaum calls the first kosher cookbook written in the English language, which was published in 1846, estimated to go for $3,000 to $5,000. Lady Judith Montefiore, Sir Moses Montefiore’s wife, penned the anonymous work, per the auction house.
“In this significant cookbook, Lady Judith Montefiore sought to elevate home cooking with social polish while remaining true to the tenets of Jewish practice,” it stated. “Additionally, she intended that her cookbook would attract the attention of ‘those ladies not of the Hebrew persuasion’ by providing them with recipes for sophisticated fare that was only incidentally kosher.”
The cookbook includes both traditional Jewish fare and dishes that “reflect the wider culture in which English Jews lived, as could be found ‘at all refined modern tables,’” according to the auction house.
“Given that fashionable Victorian tables were often groaning with prohibited foods, including elaborate combinations of dairy and meat, shellfish and pie crusts made with lard, the author had at hand a tall task,” it said. “Perhaps more important than the recipes themselves is the fact that Lady Judith served a message that one can be ‘genteel without being Gentile.’”
For an estimated $6,000 to $9,000, buyers can also bid on a 1593 copy of Pope Clement VIII’s official order to burn the Talmud.
The order begins with the phrase “with malice of the Jews” and bars “possession or study of the Talmud, Kabbalah and any rabbinic texts,” and “all copies of the Talmud were to be turned over to the officers of the Inquisition for burning,” the auction house stated.
“The result was more than censorship,” it said. “It was deliberate cultural erasure.”
