Marilyn Monroe’s chanukiah among Judaica sold on auction

SAUL KAMIONSKY

The brass-plated chanukiah, which has a wind-up mechanism in its base and plays the Israeli national anthem, fetched $90 018 (about R1.34 million) at the Kestenbaum & Company’s “Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts, Graphic and Ceremonial Art” auction. The company has auctioned more than 40 000 rare and antique items of Judaica.

Although the auctioneer’s hammer came down sooner than the $100 000 that the company had estimated, the chanukiah has a rich provenance attached to it.

Monroe, the 1950s sex symbol, model and star of films such as Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch, is believed to have received the chanukiah as a gift from the parents of her third husband, American playwright Arthur Miller.

After her divorce from baseball player Joe DiMaggio, Monroe developed a relationship with Miller. In June 1956 they married in a civil service, which was followed by a Jewish religious ceremony two days later.

Monroe, who had just turned 30, never had a real family of her own and was eager to join the family of her new husband. She converted to Judaism, taking the decision seriously and studying Judaic texts with the Miller family’s rabbi, Robert E Goldburg.

According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Monroe’s conversion to Judaism was to “express her loyalty and get close to both Miller and his parents”. It is believed that a deep mutual bond was formed with her new parents-in-law, Augusta and Isidore, who gifted Monroe with this chanukiah.

It remained in her possession for the rest of her life, and was displayed on the mantelpiece of her Los Angeles home when a coroner’s report ruled that Monroe had died in a “possible suicide” from a barbiturate overdose in August 1962.

Monroe’s impact was keenly felt in an auction hosted locally by Russell Kaplan Auctioneers on 26 October. A silkscreen with diamond dust artwork of this screen icon’s face, titled “My Heart Is Yours”, by Mr Brainwash (the pseudonym used by the French-born, Los Angeles-based street artist Thierry Guetta) was sold for R36 000.

On 12 November last year, a Monroe fan acquired a siddur that she had owned. The cream-coloured prayer book which was published in 1922, was sold for $21 000 at an auction by J Greenstein & Company in Cedarhurst, Long Island.

Annotations in the book are believed to have been inscribed by the actress herself, recording the instructions she had received either from Miller or the rabbi who had given her the book.

“It was a daily prayer book. I believe it was used daily,” Jonathan Greenstein, an antique Judaica authentication expert, told the Washington Post. “It has had a lifetime of wear in the very short period from the time she was married to Miller to her death.”

Someone who knows a lot about the auctioning off of Judaica is South African auctioneer Joey Burke, who has sold “lots of mezuzot” during his 45 years in the profession. “We actually had a mezuzah art auction once, where all the different artists got together and made some mezuzot. There were some stunning pieces,” says Burke.

At the Astra Race Day, held at Kenilworth Racecourse in Cape Town two years ago, Burke sold a Shabbat dinner with table styling and a meal for 10 people at R11 000.

He was thrust onto the auction block as an unexpected substitute for his auctioneer father at the tender age of 12.

“We had a family business in Zimbabwe, and one day my father needed to go to the toilet in the middle of an auction,” says Burke. “So he turned to the crowd and said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the best auctioneer in the world!’ I had no choice but to just carry on in his absence, and I absolutely loved it.”

Another auctioneer who was “thrown into the deep end” is Barney Girnun, the joint managing director of MSC Sports.

“One evening, before I started my own business,” says Girnun, “my boss told the organisers of a big wildlife auction that I was the auctioneer. I had never done one before, but I did it even though I was very nervous.”

In the following two decades, Girnun auctioned off many mezuzot, a painting of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe and memorabilia of his uncle, the late Springbok winger Syd Nomis.

Russell Kaplan has been in the auctioneering business for 17 years. During that time, he has auctioned off a pair of silver Torah finials from London, an embroidered Torah curtain panel, an early 20^th-century silver Torah shield, and a sterling silver Torah shield from the same period.

On 15 September last year, Kaplan’s hammer came down at R65 000 for an archival pigment print artwork titled “Lion’s Synagogue”. It was a photograph by David Goldblatt, one of South Africa’s most acclaimed documentary photographers.

Kaplan also auctioned off eight William Kentridge pieces in his most recent auction, held on 26 October, including two engravings for R40 000 each, titled “Insider Trading: Death on the Outers” and “Industry & Idleness: Double Shift on Weekends Too”.

“I have always been in the industry of collectibles and antiques, and a student,” says Kaplan, whose auctions feature interesting and unusual furniture, art, jewellery, objects and items.

And interesting items, like Monroe’s chanukiah, continue to attract attention at auctions around the world.