While I do not intend to focus solely on racy title pages, I do have a futher update to my previous posts I, II. It appears that the title page used in the Levush (Prauge, 1590) was actually a recycled page. It was first used in the Prague 1526 Haggada.

Now aside from this page, which we have seen is objectionable to some today, there were other objectionable illustrations in this edition. Yerushalmi in his Haggadah and History, notes that there was an illustration accompaning the verse found in haggadah from Exekiel 16:7. That verse reads “I cause you to increase, even as the growth of the field. And you did increase and grow up, and you became beautiful: you breasts grew, and your hair has grown; yet you were naked and bare” Accompaning this verse the following illustration appeared, which as you can see, really just shows just what the verse describes.

Now in the Venice 1603 they wanted to illustrate this verse, however, they did not want to use a nude, so they replaced it with a picture of a man, which of course, has little to do with the verse. In fact, they felt the need to place a legend on the picture so the reader would not be too confused the legend reads “A Picture of a Man!” (on the right)

As I had previously noted, many older seforim include what may be deemed objectionable by today’s standards. I had mentioned how one book had attempted to rectify this, the new edition of the Levush. In this edition the title pages from some early editions of the Levush are included in the introdoction, however the title pages has been “touched up.” Now that I have learned how to include images, I present both the original and the touched up version.

Although, the publishers of the Levush decided to alter the original, the new edition of the Tashbatz Koton did include a reprint of the first edition (1556) with the original title page unaltered. However, as is apparent, there are images on this title page that some might find objectionable.

[Unfortunately, I can’t get the pictures to layout nicely, if someone knows how to fix that please let me know]