A Talmud page. A David Bomberg Babylonian Talmud sold for $9.3 million at a New York auction. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A pristine David Bomberg Babylonian Talmud—a cornerstone of the Valmadonna Trust Library, a private collection consisting now of more than 11,000 “early Hebrew books, manuscripts, and broadsides—an exhaustive array of Mishnaot, siddurim, Haggadot, alef-bet tables, and ephemera that includes rare items printed on blue paper, vellum, and silk”—sold for more than $9 million dollars at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Tuesday. A source has confirmed the buyer was Leon Black, a New York businessman who founded Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm.

According to a press release from the auction house, the sale is “a new world auction record for any piece of Judaica.”

Read full story at Tablet Magazine.