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BY JORDAN PALMER CHIEF DIGITAL CONTENT OFFICER

Bram Hoffman is knee-deep in books. He is in a dimly lit back room in one of the largest independent bookstores in St. Louis — Dunaway Books at 3111 S. Grand Ave. Stacks upon stacks of cardboard boxes surround his small workstation. The boxes are filled part of a collection of thousands of Judaica books.

“Here we have a stack of various books that are each valuable in their own way,” Hoffman said. “Each has its own story that requires explanation and background. This ‘Hanhagot HaAdam’ was found in the collection of Rabbi David Oppenheim. Oppenheim was the chief rabbi of Prague in the early 1700s and was one of the city’s largest book collectors. It’s a book about how a Jewish man should behave in life.”

It’s just one very old book among thousands.

“The collection is made up of everything from out of print Hebrew books to Israeli novels and Yiddish plays,” Hoffman said. “We also have books of significant historical value, like early Gershom Scholem books, and a Shulchan Aruch (1753), and a ‘Seder Olam Rabba’ (1711) printed in Amsterdam. There’s also a massive collection of late 19th (and) early 20th century Jewish writers like Shai Agnon and Sholem Aleichem.”

Hoffman picks up another book, opens it and reads the Hebrew printed on the inside cover.

“This is ‘Illustrations of Jewish Life on the East Side of Manhattan’ by the famed artist Leon Israel [Lola],” he said. “It’s a picture album of scenes from the streets of the Jewish section of the Lower East Side, which was the center of Jewish life at the start of the 20th century.”

Watching Hoffman, who is fluent in Hebrew, move from book to book, reading the information printed inside, is like watching a rabbi reading the Torah. There is a cadence to his voice and thoughtful intention to his tone as he reads snippets of information about each book out loud. He seems to be in awe of the information as well as the history he has in his hands.

“My experience with each book is, essentially, ‘How did this end up here?’ So many times, I’ve found books that I knew were rare and had only seen once or twice or had never even heard of,” he said. “I’ve also held first editions of works by people I admire, like Nobel Laureate Shai Agnon, Vladimir Jabotinsky and Natan Alterman. Overall, my experience working with the collection has been one of continuous curiosity and surprise.”

The Aron Lutwak Collection

The thousands of books Hoffman is unboxing are from the Aron Lutwak Collection. Lutwak (1934-2020) was the longtime proprietor of Ideal Bookstore near Columbia University in New York City and later in northern New Jersey. He was a book dealer specializing in out-ofprint academic books of Judaic content.

Kevin Twellman and Claudia Brodie, the owners of Dunaway Books, first met Lutwak in 2017 through a connection with Brodie’s sister who worked with Lutwak’s wife, Alice.

“We made him an offer to purchase his entire collection, and he turned us down,” Twellman said. “Then, two years later (2019), we made him an offer to purchase his inventory of ancient civilizations, which was about 700 books. We traveled to New Jersey to close the deal, and we again offered to buy everything.”

This time, Lutwak was ready to sell.

“He asked us what our offer was in 2017,” Twellman said. “We told him, and he refused again. I asked him to give me a number. He wrote it down, we countered, and he accepted.”

The process of packing up the books and shipping them to St. Louis took several months. About half of the books went into the store’s inventory, and the remain-

ABOVE: Washington University student Bram Hoffman has been working to catalog the books in the Aron Lutwak Collection.

LEFT: Details of pages in the collection.

PHOTOS: JORDAN PALMER der was kept in storage as the process of unpacking and cataloging continued.

“We bought the collection for two reasons,” Twellman said. “To resell it, and because I love history and research. Even though I’m not Jewish and Claudia is, together we enjoy Jewish history, and holding these books is like holding a piece of history in your hand.”

Four years later, roughly 6,000 of the 10,000 books in the Lutwak collection have been cataloged. The process has been slow because many of the books are in Hebrew. Modern books published in Israel have a second title page in English, but many older books do not.

“We struggled to find the right person who could help us and stay with this project,” Brodie said. “And then we found Bram.”

Bram Hoffman

Bram Hoffman, 19, is a Washington University freshman who grew up Orthodox in Cleveland. After graduating from high school in 2021, he spent a year at a yeshiva in Israel. A lover of books and literature, Hoffman picked up skills allow-