Video link to this conversation: https://youtu.be/qjtlgrLe92w

Meet Samuel Marks, a young collector whose passion for rare Judaica brings overlooked corners of postwar Hasidic history vividly to life.

In this first interview, we get to know Samuel through the objects he studies, preserves, and loves. Raised in a secular Jewish family and now a law student, Samuel has built a remarkable collection of Judaica, with a particular focus on postwar Hasidic materials. His collection includes rare texts and objects related to the Satmar Rebbe - Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, postwar intra-Hasidic disputes, broadsides, early American Hasidic publications, prewar Talmuds, and clothing from before the war.

Because Samuel is currently a student and only has a limited portion of his collection with him, this conversation offers a taste rather than a full survey. Among the items he shares is an old Hasidic hat, which he uses to compare earlier styles with contemporary Hasidic fashion, showing how tradition both holds and shifts over time.

We also discuss a unique Yiddish book from 1977 that Samuel found inexpensively and later scanned in high resolution to preserve it for posterity. One striking page depicts a television labeled “not allowed,” a small but revealing snapshot of a moment before the internet, when communal anxieties centered on large, stationary media rather than the constant, portable screens of today.

Through these objects and stories, we come to understand Samuel’s eye as a collector, the joy he takes in rare finds, and the quiet urgency he feels to rescue fragile materials from being forgotten.

In the following segment, Samuel walks us through his favorite collection of antique Talmuds and explains which editions he deliberately refuses to collect. You can watch that discussion here:
https://youtu.be/jt_AwGwu-_4
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