Portrait of a rabbi with a fur coat. Unknown artist, follower of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. [The Netherlands, second half of the 17th century / 18th century?].
Oil on panel.
Approx. 34.5X45 cm. In an elegant frame. Cracks in the paint and minor blemishes. Minor blemishes to frame (minor restoration to top).
Enclosed: confirmation by Dutch art historian and curator Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, dated 1922, indicating that this painting is the work of a follower of Rembrandt, strongly inspired by works of the master.
The painting was displayed in the exhibition "Forgery?" (Tel-Aviv Museum, 2016. Curator: Dr. Doron Lurie) as the work of an unknown artist.

Twelve printing plates used for printing some of the illustrations for The Song of Songs by Ze'ev Raban (1890-1970). [Jerusalem]: Lychenheim & Son Press, [1950s?].
The series of illustrations for The Song of Songs was created by Ze'ev Raban between 1911 and 1918, during which period he immigrated from Poland to Palestine and joined the artists of Bezalel. The entire series comprises 26 illustrations; however, some editions featured only part of them. The first edition was published in Berlin in 1923, by "HaSefer". These twelve plates were used for printing one of the later editions. Some are placed in envelopes on which a label of the printing house is glued, sometimes indicating (in German) the color for whose printing the plate was used (the illustrations, printed using the color separation process, required several plates each).
The plates:
1-2. "Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves" (1: 15) – two plates, for printing different colors.
3. "I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys" (2:1).
4. "As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood" (2:3).
5. "Hark! my beloved! behold, he cometh" (2:8).
6. "By night on my bed" (3:1).
7. "The watchmen that go about the city found me" (3:3).
8. "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem" (3:5).
9. "Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness" (3:6).
10. "Thou art all fair, my love; and there is no spot in thee" (4:7).
11. "I sleep, but my heart waketh" (5:2).
12. "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah" (6:4).
Enclosed are three additional plates from the printing process of the illustrations for the verses "As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood" and "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem".
Plates: 19X12 cm on average. Good overall condition. Proof prints enclosed with some of the plates.
Literature: Ze'ev Raban, Hebrew Symbolist (Hebrew), by Bat Sheva Goldman Ida. Tel Aviv-Jerusalem: Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Yad Yitzchak Ben Zvi, 2001.

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"This book – the likes of which the Hebrew reader has truly not seen – made by the Bezalel artist Z. Raban, is worthy of attention. The artist has been gifted not only with a deep and fine feeling that penetrates the depth of this pure poetry – King Solomon's poetry – but he also realized that he should make the illustrations simple and beautiful, understandable and clear to the entire nation […] the artist Z. Raban has been able to create an original work, illustrations for an ancient Hebrew book and to a large extent he succeeded in conveying the ancient Hebrew spirit with simplicity, beauty and tenderness and mainly with the nakedness of the soul, the secret crying of love […] what helped was the painter's great love to the subject and to the beautiful Land of Israel"

Mordechai Narkis, "HaAretz", December 7, 1923, upon the publication of the first edition.

A rich and varied collection of items documenting the history of Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia, 1920s to 1990s. Yiddish, Russian and English.
"The Jewish Autonomous Oblast" (Yiddish: Yiddishe Oitonome Gegent), better known by its former name, "Birobidzhan", was a territory allocated to Jewish agricultural settlement in Communist Russia. The idea of establishing a special region for Jews first came up after the October Revolution, when hundreds of thousands of Jews lost their sources of income and became, according to the Russian terminology of the time, "unproductive". In order to integrate the Jews into the new economy of the Soviet Union, a governmental authority by the name of KOMZET (КомЗЕТ) and a Jewish public company by the name of OZET (ОЗЕТ) were established, operating together to return the Jews to agriculture.
The success of Zionism and the developing solution in Palestine to the Jewish Question led the Russian authorities to examine the possibility of establishing an autonomous Jewish territory and introducing it to the world as a national home under the Soviet flag. At first, various territories closer to Jewish concentrations were examined – Western Russia, Ukraine and Crimea; eventually the decision was made to establish an oblast near the Chinese border, in a hostile and unsettled area located at the Russian "edge of the world". On March 28, 1928, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR passed a resolution to allocate the territory for the settlement of productive Jews and the first autonomous Jewish oblast was born – Birobidzhan.
Despite the difficult initial conditions, the oblast was a surprising success in the first decade of its existence: more than 20,000 Jews migrated to the place, new agricultural settlements were established, the Yiddish newspaper "The Birobidzhan Star" (Birabidzhaner Stern) was founded and in the capital city, squares were decorated with Jewish symbols and streets were named after leading Yiddish cultural figures.
Russia allocated immense resources to the "marketing" of the oblast around the world, and all the more so in North America, for which a special propaganda institution was established – ICOR. The organization operated among Yiddish-speakers and distributed an abundance of printed propaganda materials in order to compete with the Zionist movement over the heart of American Jews.
Towards the late 1930s, with the change in the attitude of Russia toward the Jews, the Great Purge reached Birobidzhan as well. Before long, most of the Jewish leaders, writers and intellectual were executed and after World War II, all the Yiddish-speaking institutions were dismantled. In the process, the two institutions which gave the project most of its momentum and power, KOMZET and OZET, were also dismantled. In the early 1950s, ICOR was shut down as well.
During the next decades, the number of Jews in the oblast gradually decreased and today the Jewish population is down to about 1500, which constitutes less than one percent of the population of the oblast. Nevertheless Birobidzhan continues to exist as an autonomous Jewish oblast to this day.
Offered here is a collection of documents, propaganda material, ephemera and printed items documenting this unique chapter in Jewish history and the history of Russian communism. The collection contains items from the short-lived "Golden Age" of the oblast, some of them issued by OZET and ICOR, alongside items documenting its decline in the second half of the 20th century and after the collapse of the USSR.
The collection contains:
Items issued by the OZET and ICOR organizations: • Two membership notebooks and four lottery tickets issued by OZET (late 1920s-1930s). • A portfolio with reproductions of works by Issachar Ber Ryback, William Gropper, Baruch Aaronson, Nikolai Kupriyanov and others. New York: ICOR, 1929. Most of the works depict Jewish peasants; some of them were drawn subsequent to the artists' visit to the Jewish agricultural colonies. • Covers of the booklet "ICOR Biro-Bidjan Souvenir", in Hebrew and Yiddish, with illustrations by William Gropper (June 1934). • Four booklets from the ICOR Bibliotek series (New York, 1930s). • Two ICOR pins, marking the tenth anniversary of Birobidzhan (1938). • "Umsterbleche Reyd", collection of speeches and articles supporting the Birobidzhan Experiment, by Reuben Brainin (writer, publicist, editor and Zionist activist who campaigned for the Jewish settlement in the USSR). New York: ICOR, 1940. Yiddish.
Booklets on the subject of Birobidzhan, in Yiddish and English, including: • "Biro-Bidzhan un Palestina", by A. Sudarski. Kharkiv: "Tsenterfarlag", 1929. • Birobidzhaneh, Dertseylung", by David Bergelson. Moscow: "Emes", 1934. • The Jewish Autonomous Region, by David Bergelson. Moscow, 1939. With photographs of Birobidzhan. • Birobidzhan, shilderungen fun a rayze in July-August 1934" [Birobidzhan, Descriptions of a Journey in July-August 1934], by A. Perlman. Warsaw: "Groshen Bibliotek", 1934. A map of Birobidzhan included in one booklet. • And more.
Items from Birobidzhan, most of them from the 1970s-1990s: • "Forpost", a Yiddish journal of the autonomous Jewish oblast. Birobidzhan 1937. • A Komsomol membership card issued to a boy from Birobidzhan, 1979. • Certificate in the name of Leonid Borisovich Shkolnik, the editor of the "Birobidzhan Star". Granted to him after being elected to the "Council of the People's Representatives of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast" (совет народных депутатов еврейской автономной области), 1990. • "Scheme of the Administrative Centre". Map of Birobidzhan (printed in Yiddish, English and Russian), 1989. • And more.
Additional items documenting the history of the Jewish agricultural settlement in the USSR.
Size and condition vary. Some of the items are placed in elegant frames for display.

A letter handwritten and signed by Sarah Aaronsohn. Sent to her sister, Rivka Aaronsohn. Istanbul, January 25, 1915.
In 1914, Sarah Aaronsohn married the merchant Haim Abraham on a railway platform in Atlit, left with him to Haifa and from there left Palestine to live in Istanbul. Aaronsohn did not meet Abraham before the wedding and many believe she married him to enable her younger sister, Rivka, to marry the man they both truly loved – Avshalom Feinberg. Aaronsohn lived with her husband in Istanbul for about a year; however, in December 1915, she succumbed to her homesickness and returned to Palestine.
This letter, sent from Istanbul, is written on an official postcard of "Abraham Frères, Constantinople" – the company run by Haim Abraham and his brother Moritz in Istanbul. In the letter, Sarah writes to her sister about her dull and boring life in Istanbul: "My dear Rivka, it has been ages since I read you, and what is this silence? […] You are familiar with the old news and new ones have not yet happened […] there isn't much work, I am engaged in embroidery. Embroidery is now above everything else here and I too have learned the craft. We make White embroideries, broderie Anglaise [English embroidery], and other very fine kinds, and maybe, someday I too will be able to embroider nicely" (Hebrew).
Although the common object of the two sisters' love, Avshalom, is not mentioned throughout the letter, the choice to end it with the words "a thousand kisses", possibly alludes to the refrain of the well-known love poem Avshalom had dedicated to Rivka several years earlier – "A thousand kisses to you, my love" (Hebrew).
Approx. 14.5X10 cm. Fair-good condition. Fold lines, stains and blemishes. Damage to text in several places (some of the words are blurred and the beginning of the three last lines is erased).