Exclusive: Beit Shemesh Magistrates Judge Ofir Yehezkel issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the sale of a manuscript written by Israel's first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, which was set to be sold at the Nakdimon auction house.
The injunction was issued at the request of the Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook Institute, submitted by attorneys Meir Heller and Keren Abelow, claiming that the manuscript, known as "notebook 13," was illegally taken from the institute some 20 years ago.
The notebook, which includes 374 densely written pages and documents Rabbi Kook's initial period in Israel in 1904, was put up for auction on the Bidspirit website at an estimated price of $200,000.
Due to the injunction, the auction was cancelled, and the court scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to clarify the claims. The injunction prohibits, at this stage, any transfer or action on the item until a decision is made.
Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook Institute claims that the rabbi's heirs entrusted it with the notebook for purposes of research and publication, and that after the printed edition was published in 2004, it was moved to storage at the institute's offices in Jerusalem.
The institute says it only learned of the manuscript's disappearance recently, when it saw it being advertised on the auction website. It further claimed that the seller does not present the chain of ownership or the identity of the collector from whom the item was supposedly purchased.