By Dovid Zaklikowski
Correspondence from the noted historian and Chabad scholar, Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine, who passed away 2 years ago, is being auctioned off at Kestenbaum & Company in New York.
The correspondence is among 322 lots that includes posters from the Soviet era targeting Jews, Nazi propaganda and a Talmud Bavli from 1647.
Known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish history and sharp pen, Mondshine in his analytical style, corresponds with Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hirsch Gershon Harkavy (1908-1979), the author of Ekaterinoslav (today Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine), about his book.
Born in Ekaterinoslav, Harkavy moved to Israel in 1928, where He served as Director of the Heichal Shlomo Library in Jerusalem and was much active in a host of public, historical and bibliographic pursuits. Harkavy corresponded in dozens of letters with the Rebbe and, the Rebbe’s mother, Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson.
In some dozen postcards, Mondshine responds to the authors requests to write a review about his book. “In the archive of the National Library of Israel it was found,” Mondshine writes in one card, “from the year 1917, an arbitration contract between Rapaport and Cohen…”
However, Mondshine, was disappointed in the small book that was published for the large city of Jews.
“From time to time, I come across interesting things that are not mentioned at all in the book,” he wrote, “In general it is hard for me to understand why small towns have large volumes and complete with content, and the city of Ekaterinoslav only a small booklet, which took ten years to prepare. And most people’s memoirs, especially from the Chasidim, does not get a mention. [It seems] that only a few participated.”
One example that Mondshine brings is from a Jewish newspaper that did not get any mention in the book.
“How could it be that between all the sources that the author had, the Ekaterinoslav newspaper Snova does not get a mention. It came to me one issue from 1918, and there it announces the official recognition of the Jewish community! Is this so small item [that it does not get mentioned]?!”
For information about the auction, visit kestenbaum.net
