Pest Community Archives – Documents and Letters – Important Signatures

Document and letter collection from the community of Pest (Budapest). [End of the 18th century]. Important and versatile collection, including letters by the community leaders of Budapest, letters addressed to them by leaders of other communities, among which, a letter from the Pressburg community during the Chatam Sofer’s lifetime, meeting protocols, reports, contracts and various documents. Several dozens of Pest’s community members are mentioned in those documents and important signatures appear on those papers, some of which are valuable autographs by community officers and chiefs. Among the documents: a 1825 reply letter, handwritten and signed by the Gaon Rabbi Israel Segal Wahrman [who was the town’s rabbi and Av Beit Din]. The Gaon Rabbi Shimon Oppenheim Kromonea [disciple of the “Noda Bi-Yehuda” and Rosh Av Beit Din of Budapest for over fifty years] and the Gaon Rabbi Azriel Brill [Dayan in Budapest for forty years and author of the “Hadrat Kodesh”] also signed this response letter. There are additional signatures by the Gaon Rabbi David Goldstein of Pressburg [disciple of the “Chatam Sofer”], the Gaon Rabbi Chaim Brill of Pressburg [one of the Chatam Sofer’s Yeshiva’s Gabbaim], the famous wealthy man Rabbi Shlomo Rosenthal [Mahr] of Budapest [among the leaders of Hungarian Jewry at that time. Signed on two documents], the officer Rabbi Hersh Yaffe of Pressburg [served as Mohel in Pressburg, mentioned in the Brit Mila booklet of the Chatam Sofer]. 25 documents, most are in Yiddish, written on thick papers. Varying sizes and conditions (overall good condition). Some [of the documents] bear whole wax seals. Bound together in a fine, new binding.