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The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations

The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations

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The Mother Haggados: Models for Modern Analysis of Printed Jewish Illustrations There is a long tradition of illustrating Haggados, dating back to at least the early Middle Ages. Likely only a small portion of those manuscripts has survived. However, most have been reprinted, and their imagery has been meticulously analyzed and cataloged. These manuscripts can broadly be divided into two categories based on their places of origin: Sephardic or Ashkenazic countries. The former includes the creation cycle and the Exodus…

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Everything is Illuminated: Mining the Art of Illustrated Haggadah Manuscripts for Meaning

Everything is Illuminated: Mining the Art of Illustrated Haggadah Manuscripts for Meaning

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Everything is Illuminated: Mining the Art of Illustrated Haggadah Manuscripts for Meaning             We have discussed haggadah illustrations in the past (see the links at the end of this post) and we wanted to expand and update upon that discussion for this year. In this post we focus on Hebrew illuminated haggadah manuscripts, and in the follow-up post will turn our attention to printed illustrated haggadot.             While there is not as large of a body…

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Seforim Blog Pesach Roundup

Seforim Blog Pesach Roundup

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Here’s a roundup of Pesach and Haggadah-themed posts at the Seforim Blog. I. Racy Title Pages Update II 12.01.2005. Discusses the title page of the Prague Haggadah of 1526. This particular Haggadah used an illustration of a nude woman in the Haggadah’s quotation of Ezekiel 16:7 (“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…

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Non-Jewish Iconography in Hebrew Books

Non-Jewish Iconography in Hebrew Books

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As we have discussed on numerous occasions, Hebrew books contain a fair amount of non-Jewish iconography and imagery that is of non-Jewish origin.  See, for example, here, here, here and here.  Of course, Marvin Heller's article on Mars and Minerva appearing on Hebrew title pages, Marvin Heller, "Mars and Minerva on the Hebrew Title-Page," in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98:3, Sept. 2004, reprinted in Heller's collected articles Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (which…

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Haggadah and the Mingling of the Sexes

Haggadah and the Mingling of the Sexes

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I have previously attempted to highlight some of the intricacies and history of illustration in haggadahs. While many of the illustrations which appear in the haggadah are directly related to the text of the haggadah, some also pre-date the haggadah and seder service. That is, although searching for hametz (leaven) happens the night prior to the seder service many times an illustration of cleaning out the hametz and, in turn, searching for it, appears in many haggadahs. Another such illustration…

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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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