Bidspirit auction | (ANGLO-JUDAICA). [Ya’akov Zinkin]. Sepher Ha’Emeth

(ANGLO-JUDAICA). [Ya’akov Zinkin]. Sepher Ha’Emeth VehaShalom [polemic in support of the Machzikei Hadass Community, London].  First edition. Text in Yiddish. pp. 52. Chipped. Original printed wrappers, frayed. 8vo. Lemberg, Ebner / Ch. Rohaty, 1893.   Rare. No copy located in NLI.  Published anonymously, this pamphlet is, in the words of Bernard Homa, historian of this early Chareidi community in London, “a discursive account, in Yiddish, of the type of religious life that should be aimed at in any Orthodox Community in the spheres of education, Sabbath observance, kashruth, and human relations generally, and pointed out how different things were in Anglo-Jewry and how far removed from orthodoxy was the general practice in London.” (See Homa, A Fortress In Anglo-Jewry, p. 48).  Yaakov Zinkin (1845-1915) was a leading lay-leader of the Machzikei Hadath, a separatist group of immigrants in London, who were dissatisfied by what they perceived to be religious laxity on the part of the Chief Rabbinate and its Beth Din, and the entire religious administration in England, which was Orthodox, but not to the standards of the pious recent immigrants, who were led by Rabbi Avraham Aba Werner (1837-1912).  The context of this pamphlet was to defend against a recent setback for this community, in which Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Spektor, regarded as the senior and leading halachic decisor of his day, had sided with the establishment rabbinate under the auspices of Rabbi Herman Adler. The Machzikei Hadath community was especially puzzled by this, because they believed that their claims were not subject to dispute, such as the fact that the very non-kosher suet was being sold and even advertised in butcher shops with kosher certification from the Chief Rabbi.  During WWI the temporary leader of this community was none other than Rav A.I. Kook.