Reb Shloime Biegeleisen, unchallenged champion of the seforim of the People of the Book

Photos: Judah Harris, Family archives

Nestled quietly at the far end of Boro Park’s bustling Sixteenth Avenue shopping strip is a smallish, non-descript seforim store known simply as “Biegeleisen’s.” To enter its plain-looking portals, is, in the words of Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, rav of Woodmere’s Aish Kodesh kehillah and a self-described seforim addict, “to step into a time warp. It’s walking into a world of 50–60 years ago, back when seforim stores weren’t about computer inventory lists, but a place where the staff has an infectious love of everything seforim-related, living and breathing the seforim.”

At the center of this cauldron of passion for sifrei kodesh and the Jews who write and publish and buy and learn them, stood its eponymous proprietor, Reb Shloime Biegeleisen. His passing in March of this year at age 92 meant the loss of someone who, over many decades, played a pivotal role in the American Torah world’s coming of age, not just as a leading seller of Jewish books but as a champion of them.

In an age of neatly designed, brightly lit seforim superstores, Biegeleisen’s has resolutely remained what it always was: One not-very-large room, lined floor-to-ceiling with bookcases that long ago saw better days, crammed with tomes ancient and contemporary, of every size and color. The highest shelves are accessible only with a rolling ladder that intrepid souls clamber up in pursuit of every aficionado’s dream: to discover that impossible-to-find sefer that will enrich his carefully nurtured personal collection or complete a priceless set.

In the room’s center stands the seforim-lover’s idea of a smorgasbord: A table spanning the store’s length, laden with a seemingly random assortment of the most delectable of intellectual and spiritual delicacies, hundreds of newly published volumes in every imaginable area of interest — from lomdus to history and biography, Kabbalah to halachah and mussar, philosophy to Tanach, and far, far more. Several smaller tables off to the side cater to new Chumash titles and offset copies of out-of-print works from centuries past.

If it fits within the vast expanse of Torah literature, it’s here; and if it’s not here or out of print, it’s highly unlikely to be available anywhere else, either. Even stores whose large selection attracts a more learned clientele cater mostly to the seforim needs of the broad frum public: Yeshivos and shuls looking to stock the classics, yeshivah bochurim needing the staples for a new zeman, bar mitzvah-gift buyers and shoppers looking for a Haggadah or Megillah commentary to enhance their Yom Tov.

Biegeleisen’s draws those buyers, too, but it exerts its most magnetic pull over a different, uniquely eclectic range of customers. A midday visitor to the store might encounter some variation of this mix: A rav or rosh kollel from Melbourne or Memphis or Mumbai, in town for a wedding or to fundraise but simply unable to go back home without making the de rigueur “Biegeleisen detour;” a yungerman from Bobov or Mir using his lunch break to track down a sefer needed for an upcoming sugya; someone filling box upon box with this month’s new releases, destined for the bookshelves of a chassidic rebbe or a wealthy private collector; a clean-shaven rav from the Modern Orthodox orbit seeking an out-of-print halachic work; a professional in business attire who steals away from the office, feeding his compulsion to peruse the weekly offerings.

“Compulsion” and “addiction” are just two of the ways those smitten by seforim describe their condition — for which no long-term cure has yet been found. Some, like Rabbi Eytan Feiner, rav of Far Rockaway’s White Shul, choose to call themselves the proverbial “kid in a candy store, but one that has all the flavors in the world, and where you can just hang out for hours on end. I can’t think of a better mashal.”