Well-Read Life™

Inside Levenger: Stage Fright on Christmas Eve

Our first Christmas at Levenger was twenty-one years ago. Lori and I were still working out of our townhouse in Belmont, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. We had a total of 46 customers, having just started in October with a Tiny Tim of an ad in The New Yorker.

Christmas past
When your customer base is a mere double digit, it’s easy to recall their names, even years later. Henry A. Scheel, N.A., for instance. I remember his name because I hadn’t known what N.A. meant when his catalog request arrived, and curious, I called the library reference desk (this was before Google). It means Naval Architect. Mr. Scheel and I had had an engaging conversation when he called with some technical questions about his reading light, and I learned he was a stickler for good design. I’m sad to say he passed away a few years later. His obituary mentioned his highly respected Scheel Keel design for boats, and that he had designed all the boats for Disney World.

That first Levenger Christmas, Lori and I wanted to thank Mr. Scheel and those 45 other customers. We remembered an exhibitor we had liked at one of the local gift shows who made pretty little nightlights from seashells. We called and ordered 46. A few days later, working at our dining-room table, we carefully packed the nightlights into boxes with our handwritten notes of thanks. I loaded them into our creaky VW station wagon and delivered them down the hill to the post office.

Christmas presents
In the intervening years many things have changed at Levenger—our merchandise for one, and our big distribution center in Memphis. And fortunately, we have more than 46 customers.

What hasn’t changed is the gratitude I feel for each customer, and the delight I take in getting to know as many of you as I can. When describing Levenger customers to people, I say they are the Who’s Who of America—the people who, if our world can be saved, will do the saving.

Am I obsessed with our customers? Yes, guilty. I’ve met so many of you, and corresponded with thousands more, to know I’m right to feel in awe of the august Americans in the Levenger customer file.

My obsession, I’m happy to say, is shared. There’s an expression in our business, “retail is detail,” which roughly translates to sweating all the little things that make the big thing work out right. At Levenger, we’re blessed by a staff of professionals who sweat the details. They are a driven bunch of believers, and I am grateful to them.

Together we obsess and, at holiday time in particular, hope that the gifts your loved ones and colleagues receive from Levenger meet your, and their, full expectations.

What would Dickens do?
My good friend Les Standiford, a bestselling author, has just published his newest work, The Man Who Invented Christmas. He tells the true tale of how Charles Dickens’s newly penned Christmas Carol breathed new life into the holiday.

As a retailer, I tip my hat to him. But I wonder if he’s also why I’m visited by my own Ghost of Christmas, one I suspect other customer-centric retailers see as well.

This ghost comes every year in the form of Christmas Eve Stage Fright.

It happens just about the time I take a last look at our tree before heading to bed on Christmas Eve and remember the tens of thousands of Levenger gifts under Christmas trees across America at that very moment. In a matter of hours, our curtain will rise as people wake on Christmas morning and begin unwrapping Majorca Briefbags and Shirt Pocket Briefcases, Bomber Jacket Desk Sets and True Writer pens, lap desks and Levenger Press books.

I want your loved ones to rush up to you on Christmas morning—or on Hanukkah, or on whatever day you celebrate this special season—throw their arms around your neck and say, “It’s perfect! How did you know that’s just what I wanted?”

Lori and I won’t be packing up seashell nightlights this year, but we’ve been sending other little gifts to you, which you’ll find in your Levenger emails (click here if you don’t yet subscribe) and inside our shipping boxes if you’ve ordered recently—all ways to say that we care deeply about your business.

Thank you for giving us your custom for twenty-one holidays. And do let me know if there is something else I can obsess over to serve you better. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments.)

Happiest Holiday ever—

Steve

Behind the Designs: The Levenger Press edition of the Sarajevo Haggadah

Did you know that Levenger was also a book publisher? For this post, I’ve asked Levenger Press editor Mim Harrison to share the remarkable story behind one of our exclusive books, The Sarajevo Haggadah.

—Steve

Certain things you learn to simply take on faith. Like deciding to publish the facsimile of one of the world’s oldest, most valuable, and most storied of books…sight unseen.

I confess: not only had we never seen the Sarajevo Haggadah, but we’d never heard of it until our good friend Peter Mayer sent us a letter suggesting he help us publish it.

Peter is one of the greats in the publishing world—if not one of the oldest, certainly one of the most valuable and storied of bookmen. His long career has included being CEO of worldwide operations for Penguin. That was when he published Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, despite the death threat issued by religious extremists to the author and to Peter, as publisher. (He was offered, but declined, a bodyguard.) Peter now runs his own imprint, The Overlook Press, along with several others. Among the imprint’s eclectic mix are the fabled Nonesuch editions of Dickens.

A few years ago Peter befriended us at Levenger Press, and when he finds a gem he thinks Levenger customers will like, he contacts us. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a jewel in the crown.

A story of resilience

As some readers will know, a haggadah is the book of prayers used for Seder during the Jewish feast of the Passover. The Sarajevo Haggadah is perhaps the most extraordinary of such prayer books. Embedded in the Hebrew word haggadah is the root hgd, “to tell.” The story the Sarajevo Haggadah tells—and the fact it still exists—borders on the miraculous.

Not only does it date from 1350, but it is an illuminated manuscript, something almost never seen in a Jewish book of prayer. “It’s not unusual to find ornament, but it’s rare to find illustrations,” says Peter. That’s only part of its story, though.

This book survived the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s, the burning of Jewish books by Rome in the 1600s, the Nazis in 1941, and the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. This most valuable of Jewish books has been rescued by both enlightened Moslem scholars and a thoughtful Catholic priest. On one of its pages is still clearly visible the Latin inscription Revisto per mi, meaning “Surveyed by me.” Father Giovanni Domenico Vistorini wrote that in 1609, and with this stroke of his pen he saved the book from destruction by fire.

A labor of love, sight unseen

“In many families, there is one great haggadah that’s handed around the Seder table,” says Peter. “This haggadah is not so much used but treasured by the family because it calls up the past. I’ve always wanted to publish such an outstanding haggadah.”

And so he chose the Sarajevo Haggadah—on faith.

“I’d long known about the Sarajevo Haggadah but had never seen it,” says Peter. “In fact, I don’t know anyone who has seen the original.”

The Sarajevo Museum is keeper and protector of the original and is understandably vigilant: the book has been appraised at $700 million.

While Peter had not seen the original, he had seen something close to it. “About three years ago I was in Dresden, meeting with a group of Eastern European publishers. One of them had some beautiful reproductions of the original pages of the Sarajevo Haggadah.” That’s what convinced him a facsimile could work.

“I knew how extraordinary it could be, if properly presented,” Peter says. “It could be very grand.”

It is.

‘A celebration of freedom’

The Levenger Press facsimile edition of the Sarajevo Haggadah is published in association with The Overlook Press, which worked with the Sarajevo Museum to obtain high-resolution images of the pages. It is the only authorized facsimile of the work in America. An outstanding credential, to be sure, but there’s a more visceral reaction you have when you actually turn the pages.

Every mark ever made on them for the past 650 years is as clear as if it were the original, whether it be a notation or a finger smudge or some spilled drops of wine from a Seder held centuries ago. It is almost unsettling to hold this book, albeit in a good way. You realize you are bearing witness to some of humankind’s most remarkable history.

“The story of the haggadah is the story of Exodus and a celebration of freedom,” says Peter. “That is a story that has contemporary relevance and is an ecumenical one. It touches people of all faiths.”

A book, in other words, meant to be treasured. Especially once you see it.

—Mim

I welcome your comments to this post. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

—Steve