A remarkable discovery has been made in Warsaw, Poland, where a rare volume of Yalkut Shimoni, attributed to the famed Rishon, Rav Shimon HaDarshan of Frankfurt, was uncovered by the Jewish Historical Institute. The sefer, originally authored in the early 13th century, is a second volume printed in Livorno, Italy, between the years 5415 and 5416 (1655–1656), and is believed to be the first sefer ever printed in the storied city of Livorno.
This particular volume is unique in that it features a rare illustration of a menorah and carries great historical significance. It was once gifted to the legendary Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin by its founder, HaRav Meir Shapiro zt”l, during his lifetime, and was part of the yeshiva’s treasured library.
Piotr Nazaruk, a Polish government researcher and librarian of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, has worked closely with the Jewish Historical Institute in identifying and cataloging this find, along with several other kisvei kodesh discovered in the cellar of a Jewish community building in Warsaw. Among the newly unearthed items were four additional volumes bearing the official stamp of the Lublin yeshiva.
Together with researchers Monika Tarajko and Prof. Andrzej Trzciński, Nazaruk has been working tirelessly to examine, preserve, and restore these rare artifacts. To date, over 1,500 volumes associated with the Chachmei Lublin library have been digitized, with 20 especially valuable seforim returned under special preservation protocols due to their fragile condition.
The fate of the original Chachmei Lublin library—once home to tens of thousands of rare and ancient seforim—has long remained one of the great mysteries of post-Holocaust Jewish history. Many believed the Nazis had destroyed it entirely during the war, but Nazaruk is among those who firmly reject this claim.
“I could not ignore documents and eyewitness reports from the late 1940s which indicate clearly that the library was preserved in Lublin,” he said. His investigations led to the discovery of nearly 400 volumes, of varying sizes and historical periods, many of them bearing the original seal of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin.
From time to time, individual seforim from the yeshiva’s collection appear at auctions and rare book dealers in Eretz Yisrael and the United States, often fetching significant prices due to their provenance and rarity.
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One Response
This article is very interesting to me.
My extended family has a few old sefarim with very, very brittle pages. The main significance to me is not monetary but simply sentimental and personal.
Does anyone know how to go about getting such books restored?