A rare copy of Yalkut Shimoni, a text attributed to Rabbi Shimon HaDarshan of Frankfurt, was recently discovered in Warsaw, Poland's capital, by the Jewish Historical Institute.
Originally written and printed in the early 13th century, the volume, a second volume printed in Livorno, Italy, between 1655 and 1656, features a unique menorah illustration. Donated to the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva by its founder, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, during his lifetime, it is considered the first book printed in Livorno.
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Page from the newly discovered Yalkut Shimoni text
(Photo: Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin library)
Piotr Nazaruk, a Polish government curator and researcher, collaborated with the institute to uncover the find, alongside other sacred texts, including four volumes from the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva library, found in a Jewish community building’s cellar in Warsaw.
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Researchers Monika Tarajko and Prof. Andrzej Trzciński examined the texts, and Nazaruk, who serves as the Lublin yeshiva’s librarian, aims to return them there. Over 1,500 books from the yeshiva’s scattered collections have been digitized, with 20 valuable volumes already restored to Lublin under special preservation conditions due to their fragile state.
The fate of the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva library, once holding tens of thousands of rare and ancient books, remains a post-World War II mystery. Historians and journalists have long searched for the collection, which vanished with little trace.
Nazaruk, dedicated to documenting Lublin’s Jewish history, believes the library survived the war. “I couldn’t ignore late 1940s reports and documents explicitly mentioning its preservation in Lublin,” he said, rejecting unsubstantiated claims that the Nazis had burned it.
His efforts led to the discovery of 400 books of varying sizes and eras, stamped with the yeshiva’s seal, in Warsaw’s Jewish archive cellar.
Occasionally, individual books from the Lublin collection surface at auctions or antiquarian bookstores in Israel and the U.S., fetching prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Nazaruk continues his mission to locate more, piecing together the scattered remnants of this historic Jewish library.