Open Book

There’s an old saying that “sefer bli hakdamah k’guf bli neshamah,” a sefer without an introduction is like a body lacking a soul. I don’t know the source for that epigram and I’ve wondered if it was perhaps coined by someone who just wanted license to write a really long hakdamah to his sefer, or perhaps just liked the way hakdamah rhymes with neshamah.

But whatever one may say about the importance of a hakdamah, people who love seforim know there’s much truth to the idea that a sefer can have a soul. And the longer the sefer has been around and the more warm Jewish hands it has passed through, the more keenly you can sense it.

Human souls experience gilgulim, the mystery-shrouded process of transmigration of a neshamah from its home in one body to another in a later generation. And perhaps a sefer, too, must sometimes undergo its own rite of passage in order to end up in the possession of its destined owner.

Here, then, is one such story. About 17 years ago, Rabbi Yisroel Chanowitz and family, who had lived for some years in our Bayswater community, decided to move upstate to Monsey, New York. Our good neighbors, the Krugers, were very friendly with the Chanowitzes and planned a farewell kiddush in their honor in shul. But the Chanowitzes didn’t want all the attendant fanfare and so instead, on their last Shabbos in town, a kiddush took place at the Krugers’ home.