The Sky Bookstore, a fixture in Maplewood since 1970 — and before then, since 1904 in Newark — will be closing its doors. Photos by Johanna Ginsberg
January 31, 2008
The Rabbi L. Sky Bookstore, a fixture on Springfield Avenue in Maplewood since 1970, will be closing.
“It’s time,” said Fiegie Sky, who has run the Judaica store on her own since her husband David’s death in 2005. “This business needs young blood. It needs new, modern ideas, and I’m not up to it. If I were 30, 40 years younger…. I don’t even know how to use a computer, let alone Web sites.”
The store will remain open for “two to three months,” said Sky. All merchandise will be on sale beginning Feb. 3 until the store closes.
The bookstore is old school, a cluttered jumble of sacred texts and commentaries, children’s toys, Judaica, ritual items — and surprises.
Many patrons can still picture David Sky on a ladder, reaching to find a text, or digging for the perfect shofar for a customer. Somehow, they knew that he could always find everything.
His widow misses his presence even when she’s making small transactions.
Rummaging behind the counter for something in which to package a silver yad, or Torah pointer, purchased by a customer on a recent morning, she said, “I know he kept a velvet pouch here somewhere.”
The business — known then as the Mendelsohn Hebrew Book Store — first opened in 1904 on Prince Street in Newark. By the time David Sky’s father, Louis, bought the establishment in 1945, it had moved to Chancellor Avenue. He renamed it the Rabbi L. Sky Hebrew Bookstore.
Later, he added “Sky Book Associates,” and it still bears both names. David Sky worked with his father starting at the age of 12, and took over the business when Louis died in 1965. In 1963 he married Fiegie and they moved to Elizabeth, where she still lives.
Mike Schatzberg dropped in to the Sky bookstore on a recent Sunday to browse.
Fiegie said she considered selling the business, but couldn’t bear it, saying she was too emotionally attached to see it run by someone else.
“It’s hard. I have such wonderful memories of this with my husband,” she said. “But it’s part of life. You go on. I can’t do the right thing here, so I should go out.”
Rabbi Lisa Vernon, a regular customer who wandered in on a recent Sunday morning, said she would miss not only the store, but also its owner.
“First of all, I’ll miss Mrs. Sky, because she’s always such a pleasure to talk to,” Vernon said. “I’ll miss the fact you can almost always find something interesting or neat — or what you’re looking for — and it’s the most reasonably priced Judaica store in the area.”
Her husband, Mike Schatzberg, remembers frequenting the store as a child in Newark.
“It was the place to come to get Jewish items,” he said. Most bookstores can’t compare with Sky, he added. “It’s a treasure that will be gone. Modern stores do not have the collection and breadth of material this store has.”