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Judaica Online Exhibitions
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From Written to Printed Text:
The Transmission of Jewish Tradition
An Exhibition of Books and Manuscripts
from the Library of the
Center for Judaic Studies
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Why is this Book Different From All Others?
The Passover Haggadah
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| The Passover Seder is one of the most widely celebrated and best known of
all Jewish rituals. The telling and remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt has filled the
eve of the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan around the world for the past two
millennia. The guiding text for this tradition, the Haggadah, has had a particularly long
and illustrious career in the history of written texts. The same text has been directing
Jews through the Passover ritual from the tenth century until the present day. With more
than four thousand known printed editions in existence today, the Haggadah has been
reprinted more often, in more languages and in more places than any other classical Jewish
work. |
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| While scholars have begun to examine the impact of printing on this text,
few have tried to assess how printing may have changed the general experience of the
Passover Seder. In the era before the printed Haggadah, few at the Seder table would have
had a Haggadah to guide them through the ritual. With the advent of print, however, it
became more common for every participant in the Seder to have his or her own Haggadah. How
might have the dissemination of Haggadahs throughout the world changed the experience of
the Seder? How may have the proliferation of illustrated and translated Haggadahs impacted
on the experience of the Passover ritual? |
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on Display: |
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1. Haggadah fragment.
Manuscript on Paper.
Egypt. Eleventh Century
Originally, the Haggadah text was included within prayer books. This is one of the oldest
existing fragments of the Haggadah text known to scholars today. It was found in the Cairo
Genizah and dates back to the eleventh century. This Haggadah demonstrates how the written
text guiding the oral retelling of the exodus from Egypt was far from uniform in the
eleventh century. For example, this Haggadah text presents the ancient Palestinian rite of
the Passover service which not only omits the "four sons" but has only three of
the ritual questions instead of the now traditional four. |
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2. The Sarajevo Haggadah.
Manuscript on parchment,
Northern Spain, Fourteenth Century.
[Facsimile edition: Tel Aviv: Masada, 1963.].
During the following centuries, the Haggadah appeared in various manuscript forms. Because
of its exquisite illumination, the Sarajevo Haggadah is one of the most famous Jewish
manuscripts of this period. Found in Sarajevo in the late nineteenth century, this
Haggadah was produced in Northern Spain some time around 1350. Upon its discovery in 1894,
the Sarajevo Haggadah revolutionized the study of Jewish art by challenging the widely
held notion that the Jews did not illustrate their religious texts. With its
illustrations, it was a harbinger of many Haggadahs of the later Middle Ages, in which
illustrations played an important role. Illumination not only stimulated the curiosity of
those who were not learned in the texts of the Haggadah, but also has played a critical
role in the Seder ritual for all participants in helping them to fulfill the central
commandment of the Seder: envisioning themselves as if they had actually participated in
the exodus from Egypt. |
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3. Haggadah shel Pesah.
Prague: Gershom Cohen, 1526.
[Facsimile edition: Berlin, 1926.]
4. Haggadah shel Pesah.
Prague: Gershom Cohen, 1526.
[Facsimile edition: Jerusalem, 1973.]
Playing a pivotal role in the development of the illustrated Haggadah was Gershom ben
Solomon ha-Kohen's Haggadah, published in Prague in 1526. Typography of this Haggadahwhich
alternates small and large letters, and contains inverted letters at the end of many
lineswas a common feature of texts produced by scribes and preserved the look of
manuscript Haggadahs. Kohen's Haggadah included sixty woodcut illustrations and played a
critical role in establishing the iconographic genres among Haggadahs well into the
twentieth century. One example is the four woodcuts on the pages describing the famed
"four sons." Not only are all the sons clothed in Renaissance fashion, but more
importantly the "wicked son" is depicted as a traditional soldier of the period.
While his uniform would change to fit current fashions, the wicked son appeared for many
centuries in the form of a soldier, thus linking wickedness with war for the Jewish people
in the early modern and modern periods. In addition, one can see several pages later a
pictorial rendition of Pharaoh in a tub, a theme which is present in Haggadahs well into
the twentieth century. Drawing on the rabbinic legend that Pharaoh bathed in a tub filled
with the blood of Jewish children in order to cure himself of a disease, the Prague
Haggadah offers a pictorial tradition which enabled all participants at the seder table to
appreciate rabbinic interpretations and tradition. |
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5. Seder Haggadah shel Pesah.
Venice: Giovanni da Gara, 1609.
[Facsimile edition: Jerusalem, 1974.]
In Venice in 1609, the press of the Christian Giovanni da Gara, with the help of
the Italian Jewish printer Israel Zifroni, produced a Haggadah which also played an
important role in the development of the illustrated Haggadah. Encasing every page is a
classical architectural border in which there appears a Judeo-Italian translation of the
Haggadah text. Other editions produced by this printer contained either Yiddish or Ladino
translations. The marvelous illustrations include a depiction of the ten plagues, the
first time this was ever illustrated in a printed Haggadah. The Judeo-Italian translation
not only provides literal translations of each plague but further describes each in a
rhymed couplet. |
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Figure 12
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High Res (247 Kb) |
6. Seder Haggadah shel Pesah.
Sulzbach: Uri Lipman [Bloch-Frankl family], 1711.
Figure 12. |
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7. Seder Haggadah shel Pesah.
Manuscript on paper.
Germany. Eighteenth Century.
[Facsimile edition: Tel Aviv, 1987.]
Printed in Germany in 1711, the first Haggadah displayed demonstrates the growing
influence of Talmud printing on the production of other Hebrew texts. In a format similar
to the Talmud page, this Haggadah contains two commentaries surrounding the text and some
simple woodcut illustrations. The second Haggadah suggests why there was continued
production of handwritten and Img0044 hand-illustrated Haggadahs throughout the eighteenth
century despite the ascendancy of Jewish printing. Since eighteenth-century printing
techniques often could not accommodate people's desire for more elaborate Haggadah
illumination, many hand-illuminated Haggadahs were commissioned by wealthy patrons. This
work, produced in Altona by the scribe Joseph ben David of Leipnik in 1738, is an example
of such a commissioned manuscript which is not only illustrated but also contains the
commentary of Abarbanel, an early sixteenth century exegete who was a prominent leader of
the exiled Iberian Jewish community. |
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8. Seder Haggadah shel Pesach,
Vienna: Georg Holtzinger, 1815. The goal of this Haggadah, which was issued by the
Austrian publisher Georg Holtzinger, was to create a text which everyone could read
correctly and understand. Therefore, it not only presents the entire text of the Haggadah
vocalized but also contains a Judeo-German translation of the text on the inside section
of each page. The translator, Moses Dessoy, included some commentary on the bottom of the
page so that all who were reading this text could participate in the different rituals of
the seder meal. |
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Figure 13
Med Res (34 Kb)
High Res (255 Kb) |
9. Service for the First Two Nights
of Passover with an English Translation.
New York: L. H. Frank, 1863.
Figure 13. |
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10. The Union Haggadah.
New York: Bloch Publishing Company
for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1907. As printed books became less
expensive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became more common for everyone at
the Seder table to have their own copy of the Haggadah. With many people unable to fully
comprehend the text of the Haggadah, translations of the Haggadah became quite common. On
exhibit is an early English translation of the Haggadah published in America. Containing
no illustrations or commentaries, it provides the reader with only the bare basics: a
translation of the Haggadah text and directions as to how to perform the various rituals
of the Seder. Translation was not the only innovation incorporated into the Haggadah in
America to make it more enjoyable for Jews. Besides abridging the service substantially,
the Union Haggadah, the first Haggadah printed by the Reform movement in the United
States, also included such things as musical notation for instrument accompaniment,
numerous pictures, appropriate poetry readings and an appendix explaining the various
rites and symbols of the Seder for those unfamiliar with this ritual. |
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| Bibliography: |
Yaari, Abraham. Bibliography of the Passover Haggadah: From the
Earliest Printed Edition to 1960. Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrman, 1960. |
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Yerushalmi, Yosef. Haggadah and History: A Panorama in Facsimile of
Five Centuries of Printed Haggadah from the Collections of Harvard University and the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1975
Table of Contents |
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