Books from Schocken Collection Fetch $1.64 Million at London Auction

Rare Hebrew books from the Schocken collection have fetched $1.64 million at a London auction house.

The lot included 162 items from a private collection of Hebrew works belonging to publisher Salman Schocken, a German Jew who died in 1959, according to a statement issued by auctioneers at Sotheby’s in London.

The collection included some of the world’s earliest-known books. Some works contained the notes of Christian censors; others contained the family records of their Jewish owners.

Included in the collection were works of philosophy, religion, science and poetry.

Fetching one of the highest prices was the Rabbinic Code of Jewish Laws and Customs, an early compilation of authoritative interpretations of Jewish law written by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, a 14th-century writer also known as the Ba’al HaTurim. The work went to a private British collector for $120,600. Sotheby’s had estimated the book’s value at $89,640.

A copy of the first Jewish prayerbook published in the United States fetced $7,216. Sotheby’s had expected the 1766 book to bring $4,200.

Salman Schocken was born in 1877 in Posen. In 1901, he and his brother Simon founded I. Schocken Sons, a store in Zwickau, Germany.

The business grew into a chain and created a fortune that enabled Salman Schocken to buy rare Jewish books and found a publishing business.

Salman Schocken founded the Research Institute for Medieval Hebrew Poetry in Berlin, which he transferred to Jerusalem in 1934. He founded the Schocken Publishing House in Berlin, Tel Aviv and New York.

He endowed the Schocken Institute in Jerusalem, to house a research library, Schocken Library and the Institute for Jewish Mysticism.

After his death in 1959, the Institute for Hebrew Poetry, library and collection became the Schocken Institute for Jewish Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Schocken’s son, Gershom Schocken, is owner and editor of Ha’aretz and other papers in Israel.