Oldest Spanish Torah Scroll Sold

At Sotheby's for about $400,000

By Jesse Oxfeld | 1:00 pm Nov 25, 2009 | Print | Email / Share

Northern Spanish Torah scroll, late 13th century.

Northern Spanish Torah scroll, late 13th century.

CREDIT: Sotheby's New York

The oldest surviving complete Torah scroll from pre-Inquisition Spain was sold at Sotheby’s yesterday to an unnamed American private collector for $398,500—not quite the half-million bucks the auction house gave as the high estimate, but impressive nonetheless. The 700-year-old scroll was put up for sale by Rabbi Yitzchok Reisman, a Torah scribe and repairman on New York’s Lower East Side who bought it for less than $40,000 a decade ago from a Moroccan family of Spanish origin now living in Israel. Not a bad return—and, as is its wont, Sotheby’s did the rabbi the favor of giving him a photograph of the scroll as a keepsake.

Torah Scroll, Kabbalistic Circle of Shem Tov Ben Abraham Ibn Gaon, Northern Spain [Sotheby’s]
Related: Treasure Trove [Tablet]


More in: , , ,


Leave a Reply


Sundown: The 23-Year-Old Nuclear Customer

Plus the Buck-Oy State, Eichmann in the Vatican, and more

Israeli Organ Policy May Be D.O.A.

Innovative idea could discriminate against sect

More Dubai Murder Details Emerge

Hamas official was not supposed to be suffocated