“The Transformation of the Haggadah’s Preface as Influenced by the Development of Public Education in Europe and the United States.” (original) (raw)
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Book Review: The Annotated Passover Haggadah Edited by Zev Garber and Kenneth Hanson
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2021
The Annotated Passover Haggadah, coedited by Professors Zev Garber and Kenneth Hanson, is a meticulous collaboration that incorporates a set of essays by various authors. The book offers unique reflections from myriad vantage points to the well known and often repeated story of the Jewish ritual. The essence of The Annotated Passover Hagaddah lies not only in the central theme of celebration of the Haggadah but also in the numerous ways in which it can be celebrated in other traditions, as well as how it has evolved through times. It is this renewed prospect that imparts multiple connotations to the Jewish Passover ritual. The book has an eclectic prominence that manifests through a careful hermeneutical exploration of the Passover Haggadah from the Judeo-Christian prism. With significant overlaps between the Christian and Jewish liturgy, this culturally rich interfaith volume transcends the scope of the Jewish ritual of Passover and Haggadah.
The Passover Haggadah, the text that anchors the Jewish ritual of the Passover supper, is surely one of the most multiply redacted works in history. For, as we argue in the following, its scripted text forcefully drives those who read it to create their own version of the Haggadah, a version consistent with their lifeworld and experiences. This ongoing editing project is performed dialogically and conversationally, by families and friends festively observing the performative rituals of eating and drinking, reciting and talking, which are the Seder, the most historically successful Jewish ritual. 1
Making room at the table: women, Passover, and the Sister Haggadah (BL, ms. 2884)
The final folio in the illuminated sequence of the fourteenth-century Sister Haggadah (London, British Library, MS Or. 2884) depicts the family Seder, presumably modeled on the festival meal celebrated by those who commissioned the manuscript. Unlike other Seder images, that in Or. 2884 presents a centrally seated woman who, while acknowledging the viewer’s gaze, samples a ritual food of Passover while the men at the Seder interact with the Haggadah volumes before them. This particular deviation from traditional Haggadah illumination presents a woman who indicates that the senses are her own special domain. This paper considers the image in view of the possibility that Or. 2884, like numerous Christian devotional manuscripts of the period, was designed to accommodate a female viewer. This particular accommodation is presented in a context replete with Jewish notions of gender, visuality and observance.
2013
Marc Michael Epstein brings these questions to bear in his engagingly written, imaginative, and potentially transformative study, which examines how four medieval haggadot, one produced in Germany and the other three in Iberia, were designed to engage the reader and viewer in the performance of the Passover seder by facilitating the active remembering and retelling of the holiday's central metanarrative, the Exodus from Egypt. In this sense, Epstein argues, they display an originality and artistic agency too often overlooked in the study of medieval Jewish haggadah decoration, in which the traditional pursuit of visual and textual models has obscured recognition of the active and deeply thoughtful role such imagery could play in the performance of the Passover seder and the articulation of Jewish identity within this context.
A Hasidic Commentary on the Passover Haggadah for the New World
Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 31, 2023
Todat Yehoshua (1935), a Hasidic commentary on the Passover Haggadah by Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel Rabinowitz of Monastyrishche, Ukraine, later of Brownsville, New York, offers an important perspective on Orthodox experience in North America in the interwar period. On his reading, the Haggadah invites an understanding of history that recognizes and contends with all that is radically unholy: from secularism, enlightenment, and Zionism in the Jewish camp, to Marxism, communism, anarchy, Nazism, and contemporary antisemitism. As a Hasidic tsadik and émigré rabbi, R. Yehoshua Heschel sought to revitalize religion as an existentially vital facet of being, while encouraging those around him to forge a Jewish identity loyal to the past and empowered to rise to the challenges of the present.
he Passover Haggadah (pl.: Haggadot) is the most widely illustrated book in Jewish history. 1 When the first illustrated Haggadot appeared in Europe in the late thirteenth century, the expenditure of effort and money to produce a costly illuminated parchment volume for the Seder night was hardly accidental. At that time, illuminated manuscripts flourished in Europe, emerging as the primary visual vehicle for expressing theological and other themes through the medium of painting. Wealthy Jewish patrons, who wished to follow the cultural trends of their time, faced a serious problem. On the one hand, medieval Jewish tradition placed a high value on the written word and the book-producing a relatively large number of manuscripts. On the other hand, the artistic enhancement of sacred texts or the visual in general never received the special place in Jewish tradition awarded it in Christian society. 2 Manuscripts of the Bible (i.e., Old and New Testaments) -apparently the most widely spread illustrated books in the general society 3 -received little and far less artistic attention among the Jews. 4 Even the Jews of medieval Spain, who largely looked favorably at the practice of decorating sacred books, 5 generally avoided the illumination of their Bibles with figurative representations depicting biblical stories. 6 S h a l o m S a b a r T t h e h i s t o r i c a l a n d a r t i s t i c c o n t e x t o f t h e s z y k h a g g a d a h O p p o s i t e D E T A I L F R O M T h e f o u r q u e s t i o n s , 1 9 3 5 , a r t h u r s z y k T h e H a g g a d a h i l l u s t r at i o n s n o t o n l y b e a u t i f i e d a n d e n h a n c e d t h i s p o p u l a r b o o k b u t t h e y a l s o s e r v e d t o i m b u e i t w i t h n e w i d e a s a n d i n va l u a b l e e v i d e n c e r e g a r d i n g t h e l o c a l d a i l y l i f e a n d p r a c t i c e s o f va r i o u s J e w i s h c o m m u n i t i e s . P A G E Read at home in the intimate family circle, the Haggadah was considered the most appropriate book to fill this gap. The illustrations of Haggadot helped to fulfill the biblical commandment to tell (ve-higgadeta) the story and miracles of the Exodus to all the family members, children in particular. 7 Some medieval Spanish Haggadot-such as the noted fourteenth-century Sarajevo Haggadah (Sarajevo, National Museum), or the Golden Haggadah (London, British Library)begin their cycle of biblical miniatures with the story of the Creation-just like contemporary Christian Bibles. 8 Occupying a series of full-page colorful miniatures, the biblical scenes in these Sephardi Haggadot appear in the sequence of their narration in the books of Genesis and Exodus-whereby they comprise the largest cycle of biblical episodes in a Hebrew book at the time. Moreover, the biblical illustrations compensate for, and even complement, "missing" parts of the traditional Haggadah text. Thus, though the text emphatically avoids exalting or even merely mentioning the main hero of the Exodus story, namely Moses, the artists dedicated many miniatures to his figure-thereby compensating for the rabbis' attempt to eliminate the leadership and acts of the human savior-Moses-in the Haggadah. Some Ashkenazi Haggadah manuscripts also include other biblical figures and episodes that are beyond the Exodus story and the Torah in general. 9 Unlike the Sephardi Haggadot, however, these and other illustrations in the Ashkenazi codices customarily appear in the margins-emphasizing the centrality of the written word in the Jewish society of medieval Germany and northern France. The Haggadah illustrations not only beautified and enhanced this popular book but they also served to imbue it with new ideas and invaluable evidence regarding the local daily life and practices of various Jewish communities. 1 0 Though the texts in Haggadot emanating from different locations basically exhibit only minor variations, the illustrations allowed the artists or their advisors and patrons considerable freedom. Some of the biblical illustrations reflect political events and conditions of Jewish life under Christianity in various parts of Europe. 1 1 No less telling are the many miniatures depicting the Passover rituals, textual and fanciful illustrations, and eschatological scenes. 1 2 Some Sephardi Haggadot, for example, contain the only known images of the interior of synagogues in medieval Spain (the interior of surviving synagogues in Spain having been altered when they were turned into churches); Ashkenazi Haggadah illustrations emphasize the process of baking the matzah and other preparations for Passover. P A G E The eschatological depictions express the various formats and visualizations in which yearnings for better days are embodied in the different communities in accordance with the local circumstances and conditions of life. Thus, the illuminated Haggadah manuscripts emerged as the central artistic book in Jewish life and tradition. With the invention of printing, the illustrated Haggadah became even more widespread and popular than it had previously been. Instead of a luxurious single copy on parchment, which only a wealthy family could have commissioned, printing allowed the production of relatively inexpensive volumes. The early printed Haggadot were illustrated by woodcuts-the favorite technique of early book illustration in Europe. 1 3 Several Haggadot produced this way became popular, and played a decisive role in the development of the illustrated Haggadah. Among the most original and influential woodcut Haggadot are: the Prague Haggadah of 1525 [Figure 23], and two Italian editions: Mantua 1560, and, Venice 1609. 1 4 Both Italian Haggadot demonstrate the influence and spirit of Italian art, particularly that of the Renaissance, and the latter also that of the early Baroque. In the Mantua Haggadah, for example, the "Wise Son" is reminiscent of Michelangelo's prophet Jeremiah of the Sistine Chapel, but his head is covered with a pointed Jewish hat. 1 5 F i g u r e 2 3 p o u r o u t y o u r w r a t h , 1 5 2 5 t h e p r a g u e h a g g a d a h P A G E The woodcuts of the Venice Haggadah [Figure 24], on the other hand, demonstrate the mixture between the two cultures by combining the familiar contemporary iconography of biblical scenes with extra-biblical Jewish (midrashic) elements. Furthermore, in the woodcut depicting Jerusalem at the end of days, the Messianic Holy City is shown as a harmonious walled town with a tempieto (Temple) in the center-imaginatively modeled on the "ideal town" as envisioned by the humanists and artists of the High Renaissance. 1 6 The Venice Haggadah appeared simultaneously in three editions-in each, the central Hebrew text is flanked by a translation into one of the languages spoken in the Venetian ghetto (and by extension by most European Jews at the time): Judeo-Italian, Judeo-German (Yiddish), and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). 1 7 Moreover, the second edition of the Haggadah-issued in 1629 after the first was entirely sold out-contained the popular Haggadah commentary of Isaac Abrabanel, especially abridged for this edition by the noted Venetian rabbi, Leone Modena (1571-1648). 1 8 However, the supremacy of the multi-lingual Passover book, printed by the leading and model community on the Lagoons, lasted merely 86 years. In 1695, the flourishing Jewish community of Amsterdam sponsored the publication of a new lavish Haggadah (reprinted with some variations in 1712). 1 9 In many ways, it carries on the model of the Venice Haggadah, while trying to imitate and supersede it. Thus, the two editions of the Haggadah, which were printed at an Ashkenazi and then Sephardi printing houses, wisely address in the same volume the two main Jewish populations of Amsterdam: Ashkenazim and Sephardim (some sections are in Judeo-Italian as well). The wide appeal of the Amsterdam Haggadah did not stem solely from its convenient text and attractive calligraphy, but mostly because of its artistic innovations. The most striking visual feature of the new Haggadah has
The study of decorated medieval haggadot is a discipline that combines the fields of Jewish studies, art history and book studies. Choices have to be made regards the manuscript's materiality, the text and its layout and / or art historical aspects or combining all these aspects in written research. The danger of focusing on one aspect is that this ignores the connections between all the aspects of the manuscripts and their dependency on each other which can lead to misunderstanding the object as a whole. A researcher specialized in these manuscripts should therefore get familiar with all three different aspects. Of all preserved decorated Hebrew manuscripts, the haggadot are the most frequently researched. 1 The MA course 'Jewish Studies: Issues, Controversies, Models and Theories' at the University of Amsterdam focuses on the chronological developments in the discipline of Jewish Studies. Medieval haggadot are one of the best examples of demonstrating the chronological developments in a specific field of study within this discipline. This paper strives to demonstrate how strongly the way researchers approach the decorated medieval haggadot diversifies in the course of time. Of course, this is also due to developments in the other disciplines utilized for researching the haggadot. It should be understood that the manuscripts are essentially unchanged historical objects, but at the same time their interpretation and meaning change with every generation of new researchers and methods in the Humanities. In this paper I will provide a number of critical diachronic readings of publications on the Sarajevo Haggada, which was the first Hebrew manuscript to be published in facsimile, from the nineteenth century to the present in order to discover which developments have taken place in the study of this specific haggadah, which I believe are representative for most Hebrew manuscripts.