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Category: Book Illustrations

Prague 1526 Haggadah

Prague 1526 Haggadah

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The first fully illustrated haggadah was the Prague 1526 haggadah. This haggadah was reprinted in 1977 by Mekor and is now available for everyone at the Jewish National University Library site here. (They have other important haggadas available for viewing including some of the earliest haggadas). The Prague haggadah is filled with fascinating and important illustrations. As we have seen previously, the Prague haggadah contained nudes, which when appropriated later were removed. This included in the haggadah context as well…

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Eliyahu Drinking from the Cup

Eliyahu Drinking from the Cup

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I hope to have a few posts in the coming days discussing some of the artwork found in various haggdah. While for hundreds of years artwork played an integral part of the haggadah recently this has fell into disuse. While there are few notable exceptions to this, Raskin, Moss Haggadahs, this practice of richly illustrating the haggdah has been replaced with a focus on commentaries. One of the reasons, however, the practice of illustrating the haggadah, can be found in…

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Ten Commandment Displays

Ten Commandment Displays

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Menachem Mendel has a nice post collecting a lot of the material on the Ten commandments. However, there is one point that I think is worth discussing.While 10 Commandment displays are ubiquitous in synagogues, it is far from certain this is the correct approach. Specifically, the Talmud records that public recitations of the Ten Commandments are banned because there were those who understood these readings to mean only the Ten Commandments are important to the exclusion of the rest of…

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Rabbinic Pictures

Rabbinic Pictures

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Menachem Butler notes that the custom of having portraits done of Rabbinic figures dates back to the 16th century and has now been applied to YU. He also raises the issue of the permissibility of such portraits in like of the injunction against making graven images. There is a fairly substantial literature on the topic of Rabbinic pictures. In my previous post, I note that Mark included a picture of himself in his book. This was fairly common to include…

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