We stopped by Half Price Books yesterday, and, as I always do, I went to the Religion section and perused the shelves. I am always on the prowl for Hebrew books and for PD books we can use at work. As I was looking through the shelves I saw a copy of the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh (all Hebrew) sitting on the Bibles bookshelf. Someone probably thought it was a Tanakh; I suspect there are very few people at the store who are interested in Jewish books or knowledgeable enough about Hebrew to know what they are looking at. That became more clear a few minutes later. I went ahead and moved it to the proper place next to some other books in the Judaica section and kept perusing.

Then I stepped over to the Collectibles shelves and saw that they have a shelf devoted to old non-English books. Sitting there, in all their glory were these two beautiful hardcover volumes of the Midrash Rabbah—Bereshit (Genesis) and Shemot (Exodus). I looked in them expecting to see a $30 price tag and almost dropped them when I saw the price on each was $5. Five dollars. These people had no idea what they had!

So, of course, I slipped the books under my arm and casually strolled to the checkout counter. When the guy punched in the price I expected him to say that the price was listed wrong, but he made no such claim. I walked out of there feeling like I had just stolen the crown jewels. I have been wanting a full set of these for a while, but a full set will usually run about $150. Starting off my collection for only $10.83 works for me!

Labels: Books, Judaism