Yudlov 2700 Haggadah New York 1919

Yudlov 2700 Haggadah New York 1919

Publisher: Bloch Publishing Co.

1919 Union Haggadah — From the Library of Rabbi Benjamin Grossman

This 1919 Union Haggadah carries a bookplate of the Hebrew Teachers College in Brookline, Massachusetts, together with a typed note dated July 1967:

“Donated from the library of Rabbi Benjamin Grossman by his family.”

Rabbi Benjamin Grossman was a longtime figure in Boston Jewish life. By 1940 he was leading Congregation Beth Hamidrash Hagodol, the celebrated Crawford Street Shul in Roxbury, and his rabbinic work extended well beyond the walls of the synagogue.

One particularly moving part of his ministry was his concern for Jews who might otherwise have been forgotten. Together with Boston librarian and Jewish cultural pioneer Fanny Goldstein, Grossman visited Jewish prisoners at Charlestown State Prison, helping maintain their connection to Jewish life and observance.

Perhaps the most striking episode came in 1946. When Jewish prisoner Raphael Skopp was executed at the Massachusetts State Prison, contemporary newspaper reports record Rabbi Grossman accompanying him into the execution chamber. During the final minutes before his death, Skopp repeated the Jewish prayers after the rabbi.

It is a remarkable glimpse of the kind of rabbinate Grossman practiced: not only teaching and preaching, but going personally to people in places where comfort, dignity and Jewish companionship were most needed.

After his death, his family chose to preserve his books by donating them to the Hebrew Teachers College—an institution with which the family already had close ties, as his son Mordecai William Grossman was himself a graduate.

A Haggadah from the library of a rabbi who carried Jewish tradition to those separated from the community seems especially fitting: a book devoted to remembering, belonging and ensuring that no Jew is left outside the story.