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| The library stamp of R.Yisrael Perlow of Stolin |
INTRODUCTION:
Some years
ago, Professor Yitzhak Y. Melamed discovered what looked like a stamp from the
famous lost Karlin-Stolin Geniza or Archive.
He made the
discovery quite by accident as he was perusing through a two-volume list of Jewish
library markings and stamps that the Allies had found and then catalogued after
the Second World War. This catalogue is now held at the University of Chicago’s
Regensburg Library. The Allies created this catalogue to document the Jewish
books that had evaded destruction by the Nazis.
After the
war, it was thought that the once-great Stolin Geniza had been irretrievably
lost. However, from time to time rare Kabbalistic manuscripts had
surfaced in, as Melamed puts it, “the murky world of Hebraica dealers”.
One such manuscript was bought back by the Stoliner Chassidim themselves and another
was purchased by the Jewish National Library of the Hebrew University.
These, together with his accidental find, gave Melamed hope that the great Stolin
Geniza and library had not been completely lost or destroyed. This article is based extensively on Professor
Melamed’s intriguing investigation into the Stolin Geniza and his account thereof.[1]
