Ernest Hemingway signature. Photo: Ebay.

A book for sale on the online auction site Ebay has a Jewish endorsement from an unlikely source: Ernest Hemingway.

The book, Some of My Best Friends are Jews, written by Robert Gessner in the 1930s, is an examination of the Jewish predicament of the early 2oth Century. Published in 1936, 9 years later Hemingway presented Gessner with a signed copy that reads “My best friend, my brother” —written in Hebrew. The text is accompanied by Hemingway’s signature and a Star of David with the word Jude written inside it, similar to the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis.

The seller claims on the sale page that the book was acquired at an estate sale. The seller could not be reached by The Algemeiner at the time of publication, and we have not independently verified the authenticity of the signature.

Hemingway was not noted for portraying the Jewish characters in his books in a friendly light. In his novel The Sun Also Rises, Robert Cohn is a snobbish Jewish Princeton graduate who acts as the foil to protagonist Jake Barnes.

At the time of publication the price for the book was $4900.