Kestenbaum has put up their latest catalog for their auction of September 12 2006. It has some rather nice pieces.

Just to highlight one. They have the Siddur by R. Jacob Emden. While this siddur in and of itself is somewhat rare due to the fact R. Emden self-published this, the copy Kestenbaum has is even more unique. This copy contains pages which do not appear in most of the copies. R. Emden disagrees with Maimonides regarding the purpose of circumcision. R. Emden argues, contrary to Maimonides, that circumcision does not reduce sexual excitement in fact it enhances it. In the majority of copies all that appears is “In truth, [Maimonides’] remarks are most astonishing” but nothing about R. Emden’s contrary view. The lot with this book as well as a fuller discussion is number 53.

Second, recently David Assaf published a collection of his articles. While his articles did engender that much notice – his book on the other hand has. Tzemach Atlas of Mentalblog has been following this and has collected various newspaper reviews as well as his own. The book in question deals with various hassidic stories, some of which have been suppressed due the perceived slight on their participants. These include an apostasy of a Rebbe’s son as well as other interesting facts.

There are three upcoming auctions. Two of those have their catalogs online. Kestenbaum whose auction will happen this Thursday has some very nice pieces, including R. Hirsch’s manuscript on Devarim est. $50,000, you can view the catalog here. And Asufa will have their auction this Sunday the 26th, and their catalog is here. They also have some unique pieces, well worth checking out. The final auction is Jerusalem Judaica which will take place the 30th but unfortunatly their catalog is not online so you will have to find a store which carries it (Biegeleisen has it).

The Baranovitch auction catalog for their Nov. 9th auction is now available online. It has some nice seforim, including one of my favorite, R. Y. Shapotshink’s Shas haGodol s’begolim, the largest Shas ever published. Shapotshink, who was a real character, utilized R. Pinner’s shas and then added notes on the side of the page, creating the largest in size shas ever published. As many of his books, he only published a single volume. In this case, only Berachot was published.

The auction also includes some books with pictures in them. One of the more interesting ones is the Vienna, 1813 edition of the Marsha (R. Shmuel Edels) that contains his “portrait.” R. Edels lived 1555-1631 and there is no known portrait executed during his lifetime. The portrait that appears in the Vienna edition is a product of the artist imagination and probably bears no relationship to what R. Edels actually looked like. In the portrait the Mahrsha appears with long, shoulder length hair, wearing some type of slippers, surrounded by hundreds of books.

At the same time, the Vienna publishers also published an edition of the Rif (R. Yitzhak Alfasi) also with a portrait, which is also a product of the artists imagination.