And having driven out the man, He stationed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim and the flame of the ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:24). You shall make two Cherubim of gold—hammered out shall you make them—from both ends of the cover. You shall make one cherub from the end at one side and one Cherub from the end at the other; from the cover shall you make the…
Taj Art Auctions will hold its 13th auction this Sunday, April 7th (the catalog is available here). The auction contains many items worth highlighting, especially those related to historic Jewish libraries, as well as other unique books and ephemera. Recently, arguably, the most significant Jewish library reopened its doors. The National Library of Israel, housed at Hebrew University for decades, moved into its own building, designed by the starchitects Herzog & de Meuron, who count the Tate Modern among other…
Legacy Judaica’s fall auction is next week, September 13, and we wanted to highlight some bibliographical historica. Lot 95 is Elbona shel Torah, (Berlin, 1929), by R. Shmuel Shraga Feigneshon, known as Safan ha-Sofer. He helmed the operations of the Romm Press in Vilna. During his 55-year tenure, he oversaw the publication of the monumental Vilna Shas, among numerous other canonical works that became the model for all subsequent editions. He wrote a history of the press which first appeared…
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 of Jewish art as that of art in general, historically Jews have appreciated the visual arts early in…
Kestenbaum & Co. will be holding an auction next Thursday, Feb. 24th. On its site, it provides some highlights, and I wanted to point out a few others. Additionally, one can download the entire catalog by visiting the site. The first edition of R. Yosef Albo’s Sefer ha-Ikarim, Soncino 1485, being an incunabula is of course of note (lot 7). But, the colophon of this work is especially noteworthy. The colophon ends with “Ki mi-Tzion teitze Torah u-devar Hashem mi-Soncino.”…
The well known “coat of arms” of the priestly Rapaport family first appeared as a colophon at the end of Avraham Menachem Rapa of Porto’s Mincha Belulah (Verona, 1594), fol. 207b, readily at HebrewBooks.org (here). Instead of a motto, a banner proclaimed the author’s name above and below the shield which featured a pair of hands raised in priestly benediction in the upper half, while below was depicted a crow (Rabe in German) on a branch, a reference to the…
This Thursday, Kestenbaum & Co. is having an auction. The catalog is available online and the viewing takes place this week. For those interested in some highlights, the website provides those. But, I wanted to highlight a theme that hasn’t been noted. First, a quick background regarding Hebrew book auctions. [Note, this is not a comprehensive attempt.] There are five auction houses that concentrate on Hebrew books, Kestenbaum, Judica Jerusalem, Asufa, Baronovitch, and, a recent entry, Kedem. While all five…
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…
Rabbi Elli Fischer is a freelance translator living in Modiin, Israel. He maintains the “On the Contrary:Judasim with Comments Enabled ” blog. This is his second contribution to the Seforim blog. Given the thousands of haggadot that have been published over the years, and the dozens of new ones published each year, it is not easy for any single haggadah to separate itself from the others on the market. As a result, some new haggadot provide unique commentary, others contain…
We have discussed on multiple occasions the use of illustration of nudes to adorn the title pages of Hebrew books. It appears, again as we have seen before, that even though the appearance of such illustrations are really unremarkable, some will go to great lengths to either expunge or, in this case, explain away the appearance of such illustrations. In the April, 2008, Jerusalem Judaica auction catalog (provided below) they have a rather rare work of R. Yitzhak Hiyut (c….
For those interested in the topic of the permissibility of praying to angels and the controversy surrounding this topic see the post on Machnesi Rachamim and Plagiarism which has been updated a bit and now includes some interesting scans. One scan in particular, the title page, is a case of a very elaborate and somewhat unique illustrated title page. In the next couple of days I hope to return to this topic and debunk a popular explanation regarding a well-known…
There is a discussion on the always-wonderful-blog On The Main Line regarding a portrait attributed to Rashi. Someone MENACHEM BUTLER raised the well-known collection of famous Rabbinic personalities which appeared on an edition of the Shulhan Arukh. The edition to which they are referring to is the Shulhan Arukh printed in Mantua in 1721-23. This edition includes the standard commentaries as well as the commentary of R. Gur Areyeh Finzi (d. 1753). On the title page Finzi (or the printer)…
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…
The Akedah (binding of Isaac) is a very popular theme in the arts. It appears in music, most recently (from a decidedly Christian perspective), the critically acclaimed indie musician Sufjan Steven’s who has the song Abraham (on his Seven Swans CD). In the visual arts, numerous representations of the Akedah can be found, from Rembrandt to Chagall. Some of the earliest Jewish art also contains the Akedah. In both the Dura_Europos Synagogue and the Beth-Alpha Synagogue there are depictions of…
As part of the hagadah there is an extensive discussion where various verses are discussed in depth. One of the verses, Devarim 26:7, says that “God heard our pain” (וירא את ענינו), this is interpreted in the hagadah as refraining from martial relations. In the Venice 1629 edition of the hagadah this is illustrated by having husband and wife sleeping in separate beds. [As you can also see, for some reason the text of this edition has two yuds in…