A tiny prayer book once belonging to Marilyn Monroe is making a big debut at auction.
Known as a siddur in Hebrew, the small Jewish book of prayers is expected to fetch $15,000 as it goes up for auction at the Antique Judaica & Jewish Art Gallery in Cedarhurst, New York.
"We’ve had some pretty important and cool things, but this is the most significant in American Judaica,” said gallery owner Jonathan Greenstein, according to WCBS.
The actress, model and singer converted to Judaism in 1956 when she married playwright Arthur Miller and continued to be religious after their divorce five years later.
“One of the reasons, I read, that she converted to Judaism is because of her own family instability, and she wanted to be very very close to Arthur Miller’s family,” Greenstein said. “She made Jews very proud at the time.”
The prayer book stayed with Monroe until her death in 1962 and left in the care of Miller’s Brooklyn synagogue.
It even features personal notations in the margins – either reflective notations by Monroe herself, or memos Miller wanted to convey to his beloved.
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