David Sassoon, Bibliophile Par Excellence

David Sassoon, Bibliophile Par Excellence David Sassoon, Bibliophile Par Excellence By Dr. Pearl Herzog The article below is an annotated version of an article that appeared in the Inyan Magazine of HaModia, dated July 16, 2014. Harav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski addressed him as “Hanaggid” (The Prince).[1] The Michtav MeEliyahu (Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler) came to his home to privately tutor his only son.[2] Named after his grandfather, the founder of the Sassoon dynasty, David Sassoon was an outstanding Talmid Chochom, whose tremendous collection of sefarim and manuscripts, on which he expended much time and money, has enhanced the study of every branch of Torah to this day. Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), the primary port city in India is home to more than twelve million people. The city’s largest fishing market is located at Sassoon Docks, one of the few docks open to the public. It was the creation of Albert Sassoon, a member of the dynasty known as the Rothschild’s of the East. who had built the Docks through land reclamation (creating land out of the sea).[3] In 1869 when the Suez Canal opened and merchant ships could travel between Europe and Asia without the need to circumnavigate around Africa, it was imperative, in Albert Sassoon’s view, that India have a dock for ships to load and unload goods. The government of India which was initially against Albert’s plan, eventually realized the docks cemented the future of India’s largest port and paid him a pretty penny for it in addition to being eternally grateful. Albert Sassoon, who was knighted by Queen Victoria of England, was the son of David Sassoon, the founder of the Sassoon dynasty who had laid the foundation in India, of a vast mercantile empire with branches in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Turkey, Japan, Persia, and England, In the words of a contemporary: “Silver, and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium, cotton wool and wheat – whatever moved over land and sea felt the hand and bore the mark of Sassoon and Company.”[4] David Sassoon would always attribute his great success to the fact that he would strictly observe the laws of Maaser. David’s father Saleh Sassoon (mother Amam Gabbai) was a wealthy businessman, chief treasurer to the pashas (the governors of Baghdad) from 1781 to 1817 and leader of the city’s Jewish community. Following increasing persecution of Baghdad’s Jews by Daud Pasha, the family moved to Mumbai via Persia. The Sasson family traced its Yichus back to Shefatyah, the fifth son of Dovid HaMelech. When exiled to Spain the family called itself Ibn Shoshana (son of a rose) which later became Ibn Sassoon (son of Happiness).[5] Magnanimous philanthropists, the family supported many Torah institutions, built shuls, hospitals, Mikvaos and helped employ many Jews. Albert Sassoon was surprised one day when his 34 year old single half-brother Solomon Sassoon, expressed his interest in marrying Albert’s granddaughter, Pircha (Flora) Gabbai. Solomon had been on a business trip to China and had stopped for a business meeting at the Bombay office. It was there he met for the first time his 17 year old great niece, and was impressed with her knowledge of Hebrew, French, German, English, Hindustani and Arabic as well as the fact that she had been taught Tanach and Yahadus in private lessons given to her by Rabbonim.[6] Albert loved the idea. The shidduch was arranged and the couple had three children, two daughters Rachel and Mazel Tov and their middle child, a son, David born to them in 1880. Shlomo and Flora’s palatial home in Bombay was called Nepean Lodge and had a shul attached to it. Considered the most Torah minded of the Sassoon brothers, Solomon would recite all 150 perakim of Sefer Tehillim before leaving for his office every day. Modest and unassuming, he served as a wonderful influence on his only son. Young David astonished his parents one day when at eight years old he traded his toy kite with a young boy for a rare printed book containing an Arabic translation of the Book of Ruth that was written for Baghdadi Jews who lived in India.[7] That trade was to be the first item in his life long pursuit of collecting Jewish books and manuscripts. His interest in collecting Seforim may have helped soften the pain of losing his father at the tender age of 14. Solomon David passed away in 1894 leaving a young 35 year old widow and three children, the youngest of whom was 10. Because of his delicate health, young David’s physician recommended that he live away from the city’s heat. Because of this he spent most of the year at the family villas in Poona or Mahabeshwar, studying Torah and having private lessons in Persian as well as other secular subjects from a Munshi.[8] Instead of being educated at Eton like his Sassoon cousins, he was sent afterwards to a yeshiva in North London. Although David learned to use a rifle as a cadet, his poor health saved him from ever going to battle. Instead the navy hired him to translate Hebrew and Arabic documents and decode messages intercepted in the Middle East. His mother had with her grandfather Albert’s blessing, taken over her husband’s role in the business in India after he passed away. But seven years later, when David had reached 21, she decided to move to London where most of the Sassoon family had relocated. David had developed into quite a Talmid Chochom and had inherited his great love of seforim from his great grandfather Farji Chaim Ben Abdullah Yosef whose large library of Seforim in Basra, Iraq had been partly destroyed in 1775 by the invading Persians.[9] David decided to devote his life to collecting Seforim. He explained in hisOhel David, a two volume catalogue of his Seforim that he printed in 1931 that he assembled a huge library because he wanted to observe the Mitzvah of writing or acquiring a Sefer Torah by extending the mitzvah to include all religious literature: Nevi’im, Kesuvim, Gemarah, etc. David traveled extensively to Yemen, Germany, Italy, Syria, China and the Himalayas seeking manuscripts and old Seforim. His sister Rachel Ezra who by this time lived in Calcutta would alert him about different valuable manuscripts in India, North Africa and China.[10] He would also purchase items from the noted bookseller Rabbi David Frankel and from the famous Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy. David Sassoon spent ten years negotiating to buy the Farchi Bible, a fourteenth century beautifully calligraphed and illuminated Tanach which contained over 1000 pages and more than 350 illustrations. It took seventeen years for Elisha Crescas of Provence to complete it, which he did in 1383. The name of the Bible is derived from the fact that it once belonged to the wealthy Syrian Farchi family that had served as bankers and treasury officials for the Turkish governors. Chaim Farchi, who was involved with Jazzar Pasha in the defense of Acre against Napoleon in 1799 was the Sefer’s owner. Almost two decades later, an orphan Muslim that Chaim Farchi helped raise and get installed as a Turkish leader betrayed his wealthy Jewish benefactor. On Erev Rosh Chodesh Elul (August, 1817), after having fasted all day, soldiers suddenly entered his apartment and read him his death-warrant, [Chaim Farchi was accused among other transgressions of building a shul higher than the highest Mosque in Acre] and was executed. The Farchi Bible then came into the possession of the British Consul in Damascus and was only returned to the family a century later. Unique about this Bible was that it contained the names of many Biblical women that are not mentioned in the Torah but in Rabbinic writings such as the names of the wives ofKayin, Hevel, Shet, Chanoch and Metushelach etc.[11] It also contains the rules of Vocalization and Masoretic notes from Ben Asher’s Dikdukei Ha’Teamim. The interesting illustrations which do not show any human figures include Noah’s ark, the Mishkan and of the city of Yericho with seven walls. In 1902, a year after he moved to London with his mother and sister, Dovid Sassoon purchased in Egypt several manuscripts that had been discovered in the CairoGeniza six years earlier. These included an extremely early fragment of the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah which contained the Rambam’s own glosses and Rabbi Saadiah Gaon’s Tafsir, a Judeo-Arabic translation on Chumash Bamidbar. The late Rabbi Dr. Tzi M. Rabinowicz, son of the previous Biale Rebbe and author of more than 10 books including the Encyclopedia of Hassidism visited the Sassoon library in 1966 and contributed an article at that time entitled “The Sassoon Treasures” to Jewish Life magazine.[12] He stated that when visiting the library of Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon, (David was no longer alive and the library seems to have passed on to his son Shlomo) he thought of the pasuk “Shal Naaleich me’al raglecha …. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” He describes it as the world’s greatest private collection of priceless Sifrei Torah, incunabula, manuscripts and unpublished writings that cover a period of nearly a thousand years. He writes that a student of art can feast his eyes on exquisitely illuminated manuscripts, Genizah fragments, Machzorim, Haggadoth, Ketuboth and important documents. David Sassoon wrote a diary in Hebrew entitled Massaei Bavel[13] when he travelled in 1910 with his mother and sister Mazel Tov, from Bombay to Basra stopping off at Baghdad.

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