Aaron Bernstein Proof Reader (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Only this volume, for the FIve Books of Moses, was ever published, and this volume is marked as a "tentative edition." According to the OCLC the number of libraries worldwide that posses a copy of this book is 2. Please see scan of inscriptions on page facing the title page. Also see scan of verso of title page. The inscription in English is clearly written by a child. Above it are inscriptions in Yiddish. The translation of the Yiddish is: "Israel Leibush Goldstein was born Tuesday night at 12 o'clock on the fifth day in the month of Shvat in the year [5]672", [and in English:] "24th of January 1912." So he was really born on Wednesday. Curiously the writer of the Yiddish, possibly the "Daddy" who was to die three years after he wrote the inscription, misspelled the name of the Jewish month, making a common error by writing a TAF instead of a TET. The translation of the second inscription in Yiddish is: "Sarale was born Monday night in the year [sic] the 22nd day in the month of Adar II [5]613 April 1, 1913." So Mr. Goldstein had two children born a little more than a year apart and had at least one older child who two years later, in April 1915 recorded the father's own demise. This happened a century ago and yet I find the child's inscription in English moving. These people clearly spoke Yiddish at home, knew the Jewish calendar and must have been traditional, and yet they used, perhaps out of convenience a Pentateuch in Yiddish published by Christian missoinaries. Had they had a through Jewish education they would have had a Hebrew Pentateuch, not a Yiddish one. That this book is a missionary enterprise is clear from the name of the publisher and also from the reference to the Bible as "the Old Testament." Only people who accept the "New Testament" as holy writ refer to the Bible as the Old Testament. Fortunately for Christians the Muslims do not call the Koran the Newest Testament.