By Gabriella Gomperts, Features Editor
The Seforim Sale at Yeshiva University is up and running once again for its 60th year. The shelves that line Belfer Hall, filled to the brim with books, attract customers from all over the region, bringing a diverse range of Jews together over their shared love of Torah.
Brandon Melamed (YC ‘25), CEO of the Seforim Sale, has been hard at work preparing for this year’s sale. “ I am excited about the new and diverse range of speakers we have throughout this Seforim Sale with over twenty different authors, rabbis, and speakers coming to do speaking events at the Seforim Sale across a very wide range of topics,” he told the YU Observer.
“I love that I’m able to put in a lot of work and effort to connecting Jewish people with Torah learning,” Melamed said. “It brings me a lot of meaning and satisfaction.”
The sale began on Feb. 2 and runs through Feb. 23. Some of the speakers at this year’s sale include Rav Shaul Feldman, Director of Bnei Akiva in the U.S. and Canada, Rabbi Moshe Don Kestenbaum, a Rabbi at the Mesivta of Waterbury, and Rabbi Chaim Dalfin, an author of many works on Chabad and Judaism.
Rena Torczyner (SCW ‘25) has already visited the sale and appreciates how it has a variety of choices for different readers. “I really like how it brings everybody together,” she told the YU Observer. “You have options for everybody because there are all different kinds of seforim.”
The Seforim Sale itself is run entirely by YU students who dedicate their time toward ensuring that it runs as smoothly as possible. Hayley Goldberg (SCW ‘26) is working at the sale this year for the first time as a cashier. “I am super excited to be working at the Seforim Sale this year,” she told the YU Observer. “Last year I didn’t and I really regretted it, so I am very excited that I get to meet new people, everybody that’s working there and everybody who’s coming into the sale.”
Students and members of the YU community also just enjoy being social at the sale and meeting new people. High schools from around the tri-state area even bring their students to the sale on various nights.
This is also Liela Silbiger’s (SCW ‘27) first year working for the sale. She works as a section manager for English Tanach. “This is my first year doing the sale so I didn’t know what to expect, but so far it has exceeded all expectations I did have,” she told the YU Observer. “It’s a lot of fun, everyone is so nice, it’s such a chill vibe.”
One of the benefits for students working the sale is that they get the chance to peruse the aisles and find new books to read while they work. “I get to look at all the seforim that I might want to buy, so I’ve got my TBR piling up,” Goldberg said.
For many students, employees at the sale and members of the YU community, the sale acts as a conduit to bring the Jewish community as a whole together. No matter their upbringing, education or religious background, Jews with a love of talmud Torah are united by the sale.
Cashier Charli Ernstein (SCW ‘27) enjoys working in an environment that is welcoming to Jews from different demographics and walks of life. “ I helped checkout a female from the rabbinical college at Columbia the other day, and she had this very intellectual English and Hebrew sefer,” she told the YU Observer. “I also checked out books for someone who was very chassidish.”
“[It] was very meaningful to me to see how attached people are to Torah, no matter what they look like or how they necessarily keep it,” Ernstein added.“They still want to learn it and they have a value in their life to find that truth that God gives us in this world through learning Torah.”
Photo Caption: The Seforim Sale in Belfer Hall
Photo Credit: JJ Grayson