AN UNKNOWN PASSOVER HAGGADAH BY JOSEPH BEN DAVID OF LEIPNIK IN THE LIBRARY OF HALL

The library of Blickling Hall, a house in Blickling, (England), holds an illustrated manuscript Passover Haggadah of the eighteenth century, that was hitherto unknown in the literature on decorated Hebrew manuscripts of the period. I It is a Haggadah that combines the Ashkenazic and Sephardic rites and was copied and illus- trated in Altona in 1739/40 by the well-known scribe/artist Joseph ben David of Leipnik (N.E. Moravia; Czech Republic). The manuscript most probably reached Blickling Hall as part of the bequest by Sir John Hobart, fifth Baronet and first Earl of Buckinghamshire, of the collection of his second cousin, Sir Richard Ellys of (23 December 1682-1742), consisting of important manuscripts and some 15.000 printed books. The Library probably arrived at Blickling in 1745.2 The book is listed in an eighteenth-century handwritten catalogue kept at the library in Blickling Hall as: 'Passover. The Ritual, Order & Prayers used by the Jews at the celebration of the Passover, AMS (Amsterdam) in Hebrew, on vellum, & adorned with figures finely illumi- nated (underlined in the original). fol. in a case.' Based on the hand- writing it is clear that the entry was actually written by Richard Ellys's private librarian John Mitchell, who died in October 175 I at the age of seventy. A similar entry could not be found until now in another ten-volume handwritten volume kept in the library, titled Bibliotheca Auctorum Manuscripta on the spine, comprising numerous notes by John Mitchell on books in Richard Ellys's library, up to 1742. There are actually no traces of ownership in the manuscript, apart from a pencilled

[ I am grateful to Marc Purcell of the National Trust for inviting me to come to Blickling and study the manuscript. r am equally grateful to his colleague Yvonne Lewis, who provided me with valuable biographical and bibliographical information regarding Sir Richard Ellys.

2 N. Barker, Treasures from the Libraries of the National Trust Country Houses NO.7 2 (New York 1999) 126; N. Barker, 'The Libraries of the National Trust', in N. Barker, Treasures from the Libraries of the National Trust Country Houses (New York 1999) 35-43: 35-37·

5. Bergel; M.Hrocke and I.Zwiep (eds), Zulot 20()2, 170-,80 AN UNKNOWN PASSOVER HAGGADAH BY JOSEPH BEN DAVID OF LEIPNIK

note '6929' on the free endpaper at the back. Nicholas Barker suggested that the manuscript may have been purchased by Richard Ellys together with Hans Sloane, who did indeed own a similar Haggadah done in the same year by the same artist; this piece is now in the British Library. The manuscript contains the full text of the Haggadah, and is based on the well-known printed Amsterdam editions of 169sand 1712. From the middle of the seventeenth century onward the printed Hebrew books from Amsterdam (and the two Haggadot certainly rank among the most famous) were known for their good quality paper and their remarkably clear type. These inspired printers in the German-speaking countries to print their books, as they put it, 'with the letters of Amsterdam', that is with Hebrew type imitating the Amsterdam Hebrew letters. When in the second decade of the eighteenth century Hebrew manuscript artists were commissioned by Central-European well-off Jews to produce decorated prayer books, these artists decided to copy their manuscripts with these very 'letters of Amsterdam'. From the decades that followed, approxi- mately until the sixties of the century, some 4S0 manuscripts remain nowadays, accounting for a revival or second blooming of Hebrew manuscript production. Many of these manuscripts were based on printed Amsterdam examples, both textually and iconographically; this goes especially for the Haggadot that were produced, which make up some 2 S % of all the manuscripts of this type produced during the eigh- teenth century.3 The Amsterdam edition of 169S contains not only the text of the Haggadah, but also two commentaries, an abridged version of the commentary by the medieval Spanish scholar Isaac Abravanel, which had first appeared in print in Constantinople in ISO S, and an anonymous mystical commentary, which had not been printed before but seems to be dependent on the important halakhic compendium Shene Luchot

Ha-berit by Isaiah ben Abraham Ha-Levi Horowitz (IS6S? - J 630). The manuscript contains further abridged versions of these commentaries as well, and it is not clear whether these abridgments are the work of the scribe, or whether they were copied from another printed or handwritten source. The commentaries start on foJ. 4r: Abravanel in the outer margins and occasionally in the bottom margins, the mystical commentary in the

3 Data retrieved from my forthcoming Repertory of Decorated Hebrew ManuscritJts of the Eighteenth Century.