Rashba Bible
Info from Sotheby:
Your query about a Hebrew Bible that we sold here in London on the 5th December 1989 has been forwarded to me.
We sold two Hebrew Bibles in the December 1989 sale. Both were consigned by the British Rail Pension Fund who had purchased them at Sotheby's in the 1970's in the Sassoon sales. Solomon David Sassoon was one of the greatest collectors of Hebrew Manuscripts and his collection was dispersed through our rooms over the last 30 years.
rashba bible.pdf
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Adobe Acrobat document [2.6 MB]
From British Library:
I have managed to trace the Sotheby's sale catalogue of 1989 in which there is a full description of the Cervera or Rashba Bible which
contains relevant information about Astruc ben Yitzhak ben Shlomo ibn Adret for whom the
manuscript was copied and illuminated.
Astruc was the grandson of the famed Rabbi Shlomo ben Adret (1235-1310) known as RASHBA, the
acronym of his name.
It previously belonged to the British Rail Pension Fund and before that it formed part of the David Solomon
Sassoon collection.
The exhibition in 1982 you are referring to (on manuscripts from the Sassoon collection)
was organised by teh Hebrew Section of the British Library, but because at the time we did not have a building of our own and the collections were housed in the British Museum
building, the items were displayed there.
The exhibition was curated by a former member of staff, Dr D.
Goldstein, who died in 1987. The ownership of the Rashba Bible which was indeed in that display was not disclosed.
I think your best bet regarding its current ownership would be to contact the Sassoon family who live in
Israel.
Yours sincerely,
The British Library
Asian and African Studies
rashba bible description.pdf
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