Medieval machzor sold for $US8.3 million
Only one Judaica item has ever sold for more at auction than the medieval machzor that just sold for millions of dollars.
An 800-year-old Jewish prayerbook from Germany sold at auction on October 19 for $US8.3 million ($AU11 million).
The Luzzatto High Holy Day Machzor, easily beat the $4-6 million pre-sale estimate by Sotheby’s New York auction house as four bidders battled one another for five dramatic minutes.
It comes out of the collection of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a 160-year-old French Jewish organisation that operates schools in Israel, France and Morocco. The money raised from the auction will pay for scholarships, programs for children with special needs and investments in digital education.
Only one Judaica item has ever sold for more at auction: the multivolume Bomberg Talmud from the Valmadonna collection, which sold for $9.3 million in 2015.
An artefact of medieval Germany that went on to circulate among various Jewish communities in Europe, the Luzzatto Machzor is handwritten in Hebrew and features colourful illustrations of human bodies with animal heads. (Use of animal heads was intended to avoid halachic constraints on reproducing human images.)
“In my 26 years at Sotheby’s I handled many rare and interesting books,” said Sharon Mintz, the auction house’s senior consultant for Judaica, in a video presentation. “However I have never had an opportunity to sell an early illustrated medieval Hebrew prayerbook and I’d be surprised if I ever have this opportunity again. It is such a rare manuscript.”
The sale offers another sign of just how hot the rare Judaica market has become in recent years in line with the overall market for collectibles.
In preparation for the auction, the prayerbook was professionally digitised and reproduced online.
“I am fairly certain that as a result of our research and cataloguing and photography, a much larger group of people than ever before now know of its existence and significance,” Mintz wrote. “Should they wish to study it, they are now able to do so 24/7 through the comprehensive digital images.”
JTA.ORG
comments