Rather than Sotheby’s or Christie’s, the setting was a synagogue. And instead of art or fine jewels, letters and words were being offered to the highest bidder.
So began the auction at Adath Israel on Sunday to complete the last 18 words in its new “Torah of Remembrance.”
The Orthodox San Francisco shul commissioned a new Torah, its ninth, in honor of its 50th anniversary, which it just marked.
Because it is a Torah of remembrance, congregants could dedicate specific sections in memory of loved ones, including those who were killed in the Holocaust.
Before the auction began, the new Torah “met” the congregation’s other Torahs under a burgundy velvet chuppah outside the Sunset District synagogue.
“This Torah was written by a prominent scribe in Israel,” Rabbi Jacob Traub told the full house. “It’s on natural parchment, not dipped in acid like many are.”
Traub went to Israel to bring it back himself.
The auction began slowly, with individual letters sold rather than whole words. And certain letters, like a mem and a resh, proved to be much more popular than others, especially the poor tzadi, which no one wanted.
The rabbi gave a Hebrew lesson like no one in the congregation ever had.
Calling the dalet a “multipurpose letter,” and the vav “a very good letter because you can use it in almost everything,” Traub pronounced the letters hay, yud and dalet, which spell hayad (hand), “three of the most utilitarian letters.”
Whenever no one wanted to purchase a letter for a $100 minimum bid, even after Traub declared it a metsiyah (Yiddish for a bargain), the synagogue stepped in and bought the letter with money out of its own funds.
And the audience laughed when Traub announced that one word was sold to an anonymous bidder in Hong Kong.
As the auction neared its end, Traub encouraged higher bids, quipping to one woman, “You can bid against your husband; in fact, I encourage it.”
The final word of the Torah, which is Yisrael, was sold to Charles and Annie Glass, members of Adath Israel since 1951, for $3,600, the highest bid of the day.
Charles Glass wanted it because “it’s the biggest honor,” he said, and like the word Yisrael, his Hebrew name, Yehezkel, also begins with yud and ends with lamed.
After the auction concluded, Rabbi Yaakov Safranowitz, a Los Angeles-based scribe, came up to the bimah and wrote in the remaining 18 words, with those who bought them standing nearby.
Afterward, the congregants enjoyed a celebratory lunch. The last time Adath Israel commissioned a Torah was in 1962.