Rebound Siddurim

Shabbat Shalom to you all,
 

At the request of the Rabbi I will say a few words about the rebound Siddurim.

When this one-handed differently able person came to Chabad, after the loss of my

wife, I could not read the pages in the Siddur because they didn't lay flat. As it is known

in the trade, the pages were mousetrapping. Having designed and built

bookbinding machinery, I knew what I had to do. I immediately sent the Siddur to be

rebound by one of my customers.
 

The Siddurim or any new books you buy at the store are known as edition bound books.

They are produced in large quantities on very high speed equipment capable of

producing thousands of books per hour. My rebound Siddur as well as those you held

before in your hands, is known to be a library bound book. What’s the difference you

may ask? By way of information, an edition bound book, statistically, will circulate in the

library 26 times before it fails and it must be repaired. Members of the library binding

institute (LBI), the trade association I have been serving now for 66 years, will

guarantee their rebound books, to circulate 100 times. While the cost of a library bound

book being about twice as much as an edition bound one, one can see clearly the

economy of scale in library binding.
 

What makes a library bound book superior to an edition bound book is in the materials

and the binding methods employed in the process. For example, the cover boards used

in edition binding are known as chipboard made out of waste paper, the quality of which

is inferior to the Binder’s Board which is made from 100 percent recycled fiber. The

cover material itself is from the top of the line grade of heavy-duty, pyroxilin coated

cotton known as Buckram.
 

When I entered into this industry in 1952, other than the Oversewing machine which

was developed in 1922, there were no machines specifically developed for library

binding. The line of fifty or so machines which I developed over the years reduced the

41 hand operations previously needed to bind a book to just a few. It made the industry

grow and flourish. It is a real privilege to be given the opportunity to play in an arena

that is allowing me to channel my creative talents to transform a labor-intense industry

into one of modern manufacturing.

It is one of my joys  to know Jack  Bendror. I am sorry that I can not be there for the kiddish in Jacks honor and ask Rabbi Paltiel to read this brief note. Jack always has a smile and aura of happiness about him. His life spirit is so powerful that I t is infectious. His love for our Chabad and all its members is so clear in each and every encounter one has with Jack. We at Chabad are lucky to be a part of his new extended family whom he has genuinely and enthusiastically embraced. Thank you Jack for being part of our lives.