Appeals Court Rules Chabad Can Keep Rebbe’s Library

The Appeals Court for the Second Circuit in Manhattan Tuesday unanimously upheld a federal district court decision that awarded the library that belinged to the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Schneersohn, to the Lubavitch movement.

The imbroglio pitted Barry Gourary, grandson of the sixth rebbe, against the organized Lubavitch, or Chabad, community.

Gourary, a Montclair, N.J., businessman who is not a member of Chabad, had claimed part of the library had been left him by virtue of a will his grandmother, Nechama Dina Schneersohn–the sixth rebbe’s widow — left at the time of her death in 1970.

In it, she wrote that the 50,000-book library was the property of herself, her two daughters, and her grandson. Chabad, however, claimed it was entitled to the library because it was communal property.

In April 1985, Gourary was seen on a video surveillance system taking books surreptiously from the library, located at Chabad worldwide headquarters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y.

He had taken more than 400 books and manuscripts and sold more than 100 to rare book dealers in the United States, England, Switzerland and Israel, at a personal profit he claimed was $186,000.

Chabad went to court to restrain Gourary from selling more books, and he countered with a suit claiming ownership of the library. In January, federal Judge Charles Sifton awarded the library to Chabad.

Chabad repurchased many of the works at prices in excess of that amount. The remaining books and manuscripts were placed in escrow. These will now be returned to the library.

FOUND TO BE COMMUNAL

In the original 41-page decision, handed down Jan. 6, 1987, Sifton found it “inescapable” that the library was the property of the Lubavitch community, “held in trust for the benefit of the religious community of Chabad Chasidism.”

Gourary and his mother, Hanna Gourary, the sixth rebbe’s daughter, had appealed the decision on two grounds: that Schneersohn had left the library to them, despite a 1946 letter in which he said the books were communal property; and that they had been improperly denied the right to a jury in the original trial.

In the appeal, Gourary and his mother referred to the 1946 letter, an important piece of evidence in the original trial.

The letter was from Schneersohn to an American scholar and bibliographer, Dr. Alexander Marks, former chief librarian at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In it, the rebbe had asked Marks’ help in getting the library out of Poland.

Sifton had called this piece of evidence “one extraordinary letter,” and much of his decision rested on this piece of correspondence.

In it, Schneersohn had requested “that as a renowned authority on the subject, you should please write a letter to the State Department to testify on the great value of these manuscripts and books for the Jewish people in general and particulary for the Jewish community of the United States to whom this great possession belongs.”

The Gourarys claimed that the rebbe had written the letter only to enlist the government’s help in bringing out his books, not to state that they belong to the community.

During the first trial, YIVO scholar Lucjan Dobroszycki had testified that post-war Polish American relations were good and that Poland would have facilitated the return of the library to this country sooner had it been the rebbe’s personal possession. Thus, no subterfuge would have been needed.

The appeals court also concluded that a trial on an “equitable issue,” with no demand for damages, does not call for a jury. In addition, it was concluded that Gourary’s request for a jury had not been filed on time.

The collection, which Chabad spokesman Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky described as being of “incalculable value,” contains books and manuscripts on Hasidism and Kabbalah by the various Lubavitcher rebbes. Included in the collection, but not taken by Gourary, is a siddur said to have been the possession of the Ba’al Shem Tov, 18th century founder of Hasidism.

SECULAR, NOT RELIGIOUS, COURT

The case was remarkable in that it was taken to a secular court of law rather than a rabbinic court, and because it revolved around a dispute between members of the same Lubavitch family that has led the Chabad movement for more than 200 years.

Krinsky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Tuesday that “hundreds of thousands of people all over the world eagerly awaited this decision, and we’re enormously delighted with the verdict.”

No appeal is planned.

Much of the library was sent to America from Poland in 1946, with other books and manuscripts following in 1971 and 1973. (A sizable portion of the Lubavitch library remains in Russia, where the movement originated, stored away in museums and libraries, unavailable to the Jewish community.)

Chabad originally went to secular court in August 1985 to obtain a restraining order to prevent Gourary from selling any more books from the library. There is no provision in Jewish law for immediate enforcement of a restraining order.

Krinsky, who was plaintiff in the original case, said the matter was taken to secular court because “according to Jewish law, when matters cannot be reconciled in a beis din, the “Shulchan Aruch” — the Code of Jewish Law — not only permits the use of a secular court, but encourages it, for the sake of justice.”

He stressed that it was without question that Schneersohn lived his life according to Orthodox Jewish law and would not have left the library to his wife. His sole intent was to bequeath the library to the Lubavitch community, he said.