For over 25 years, renowned manuscript sleuth Moshe Rosenfeld has been traveling around the world in an effort to find and redeem ancient Jewish seforim

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

The Most Unlikely Places

For over 25 years, renowned manuscript sleuth Moshe Rosenfeld has been traveling around the world in an effort to find and redeem ancient Jewish seforim. He’s rummaged through attics and cellars in remote locations where Jews lived in the past. He’s climbed up the Himalayas and reached the slopes of the Andes Mountains. He’s traveled across America and Europe, South Africa and Russia. And he’s managed to gain access to convents and monasteries — even closely guarded sections of the Vatican library — in his ongoing efforts to redeem manuscripts and sifrei kodesh.

“Once,” Rosenfeld relates, “as I was exploring a library in a remote convent, I climbed a ladder to look on the upper shelves, which no one had touched for decades, maybe centuries. Suddenly, I found something amazing — an ancient tiny Tehillim from the 16th century. It wasn’t more than a centimeter tall.

One of his most surprising finds was in a convent, where he came across a Mishnayos with the stamp of Nazi official Hermann Goering. Goering, an art aficionado, built a well-known, massive collection by plundering pieces from Jewish owners who were deported to their deaths in Nazi camps. At the end of the war, Goering’s personal collection included 1,375 paintings, many sculptures, carpets, furniture, and other artifacts. But what many don’t know is that he also looted libraries and private collections in order to establish a Jewish library for research purposes. In a maneuver whose details he won’t discuss, Rosenfeld brought the seforim he found to Israel.

Keeping It Secret

Rosenfeld, of course, declines to expound on some of these trips, and when he does reveal information about his travels, he’s careful to omit many identifying details. One rescue mission that was publicized involved the transfer of a Jewish library established by Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann.

“Like Goering, Eichmann collected thousands of Jewish seforim with the goal of establishing a Jewish library,” he relates. “The seforim were stored in Prague, and they remained there after the Holocaust, locked in storage rooms despite Jewish demands over the years to return them. After many diplomatic efforts, the Czech government in 1994 agreed to transfer most of the seforim to Jewish hands.”

Rosenfeld was asked by a friend to supervise the transfer. The seforim were sent to Israel via diplomatic mail, and each shipment included 14 cases of books. Ultimately, they arrived at a library in the Gush Etzion town of Alon Shvut, where they remain to this day.

Rosenfeld — or simply Moishe, as he insists on being called — is an expert in seforim, manuscripts, and Judaica. Twenty-five years ago, he and his friend and associate, Yeshayahu Winograd (who passed away this past year) established the Institute for Computerized Bibliography. Their innovation, known in Hebrew as Otzar Hasefer Ha’ivri Hamemuchshav, is used by central libraries and research institutes all over the world.