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 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 of Jewish art as that of art in general, historically Jews have appreciated the visual arts early in their evolution into a nation. Aside from the biblical forms, we have evidence of art dating to the second century of the common era in the well-known frescos at the Dura-Europos synagogue.[1] But, such appreciation was not limited to second century Palestinian Jews, as evidenced from the discussion below, this appreciation continued, almost unabated, until the modern period. It was not just the artist class or wealthy acculturated Jews that were exposed to and admired this medium. For example, in the 1560 Mantua haggadah, one of the more important printed illustrated haggadot, the wise son appears to be modeled after Michelangelo’s Jeremiah in the Sistine Chapel (view it here: link). Lest one think that it is highly unlikely that a 16th century Italian Jew would have even entered the chapel, let alone been familiar with this painting, a contemporaneous account of Jewish art appreciation disabuses those assumptions. Specifically, Giorgi Vasari, the 16th century artist and art historian, in his Lives of Excellent Painters (first published in 1560), records regarding Michelangelo’s statute of Moses – that is a full statute depicting the human form and was placed in the church of San Pietro in Rome – that “the Jews [go] in crowds, both men and women, every Saturday, like flocks of starlings, to visit and adore the statue.” That is, the Sabbath afternoon activity was to go to church to admire the statute of Moses, that is more famous for having horns than its Jewish visitors.[2] Hebrew Manuscripts Background A brief background regarding Hebrew manuscripts before delving into the illuminated haggadah manuscripts. Details regarding manuscripts, the name of the copyist, the date, and the place where the manuscript was written, were supplied not at the beginning of the book – as is the convention with printed books and title pages – instead in manuscripts this information is provided at the end. For this reason, the scribe’s note containing the information was called a colophon – from the Greek word kolofon, meaning “summit” or “final point.”[3] Number of Hebrew mss. A cautious guess of the number of extant Hebrew manuscripts in existence is between 60,000 -70,000 “but no more than 30-40 thousand of them predate the middle of the sixteenth century.”[4] Of the 2-3 hundred thousand Hebrew manuscripts presumed in existence in Europe at the beginning of the fourteenth century, probably no more than four to five thousand are extant today, possibly even less. “From the tenth century (before which information is very scarce) to 1490 (when the influence of printing books began to be felt)” there are an estimated one million manuscripts, meaning, “that 95 per cent of manuscripts have disappeared.”[5] In addition, the early printed books – incunabula – had similar survival rates. The dearth of manuscripts has left a significant hole in our knowledge of major Jewish texts. For example, there is only one complete manuscript of the Palestinian Talmud (1289) and two partial manuscripts. The Babylonian Talmud fared slightly better, with one complete manuscript (1342) and 63 partial manuscripts in libraries, with only 14 dating from the 12th & 13th centuries.[6] One of the partial TPs is known as the Vatican Codex 133 – and worth mentioning is the Vatican and its role regarding Hebrew manuscripts. While there is no doubt that the Church had a significant hand in reducing the number of manuscripts – in reality the destruction of Hebrew manuscripts was the work of the Jesuits and not the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, the Church confiscated and, thus in some instances preserved Hebrew manuscripts. Consequently, we have a number of important Jewish texts that survive in the Vatican library. Today, many of these manuscripts have been published. The incomplete manuscript of the TP is but one example. Additionally, regarding the use of (rather than just reprinting) the Vatican library, for at least late 19th century, Jews had access to the library. For example, R. Raphael Nathan Rabinowitz, who authored a monumental work on Talmudic variants provides that “I prayed to God to permit me entrance to the Vatican library to record variant readings” his prayer was answered, and he received permission not only to use it during regular hours but “even on days that it was closed due to Christian holidays, when the library was closed to all, and even more so Jews.”[7] In total he spent close to 9 months in the library. In addition, Rabbi Rabinowitz’s presence and special status at the Vatican library was instrumental for the editing of the Vilna Talmud, where he secured permission for the Romm-employed copyists to work with manuscripts of the commentary of Rabbenu Hananel, even though they arrived in Rome during the summer season when the library was closed. Of the estimated one million Hebrew manuscripts from the 10th century until 1490, approximately 5% have survived. As mentioned, religious persecution was one reason, but the main reasons are (1) deterioration from use, (2) accidents, and (3) reuse. The first two are self-explanatory, the third requires a bit of explanation. From the times that manuscripts were written on papyrus, unwanted manuscripts were scraped or washed and then reused. (This papyrus recycling was not confined to reusing for books, papyrus was used from wrapping mummies, burned for its aroma, and used, according to Apices, to wrap meat for cooking). Similarly, leather and parchment were recycled, in the more egregious examples for shoe leather but in many cases for book bindings. The latter reuse would be critical to the survival of numerous Hebrew manuscripts which have now been reclaimed from bindings. It is estimated that there are 85,000 such binding fragments. “The commonest use of written folios, however, was in bindings, whether for binding strips, end papers, or covers.”[8] Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts The “earliest examples of Jewish book illumination are tenth-and eleventh-century Bible codices written in the Orient or Near East. The illuminations are not figurative but consist of a number of decorative carpet pages adorned with abstract geometric or micrographic designs preceding or following the Biblical text.”[9] While these early illuminated manuscripts did not contain human figures, they did contain the first iterations of something unique to Jewish manuscripts, “one form of manuscript depiction unique to Jewish manuscripts is micrography with the earliest examples of this art may be found in the tenth-century Bibles written in the Orient.”[10] A beautiful example of this art can be seen in the carpet pages for the Leningrad Codex. Similar non-representational geometric art was incorporated into Islamic art to avoid graphic representation. Consequently, symmetrical forms were created which required advances in math theory to accommodate the ever more complex art. Hebrew manuscripts did not adopt the Islamic convention – for the most part – and the earliest illustrations of human figures appear in Franco-Ashkenazic manuscripts – bibles – of the thirteenth century. The earliest extant illustrated haggadah[11] is what is known as the Birds’ Head Haggadah dated to the early 1300s. The moniker “Birds’ Head” comes from the fact that the illustrator used birds heads/griffins in place of human heads. This manuscript is not the only Jewish manuscript to use zoophilic (the combination of man and beast) images. Zoophilic images can be found in a variety of contexts in Jewish manuscripts. For example, in the manuscript known as Tripartite Machzor, men are drawn normally while the women are drawn with animal heads.[12] The name of this Machzor comes from the random fact that the manuscript was split up into three. At times manuscripts are titled by location (Leipzig Mahzor), history (tripartite) or owner. In one example, the “Murphy Haggadah” “ suffered a fate all too common to many Hebrew texts. Before the Second World War the manuscript belonged to Baron Edmond de Rothschild. During the war it was stolen and sold to an American, F.T. Murphy, who bequeathed it to Yale University, his alma matter. For years it was known as the “Murphy Haggadah” until, in 1980, a Yale scholar, Prof. J. Marrow, identified as belonging to the Rothschilds. The manuscript was returned to the Rothschild family and presented by the Baroness Dorothy to the Jewish National Library.[13] When it comes to the Birds’ Head manuscript, a variety of reasons have been offered for its imagery, running the gamut from halachik concerns to the rather incredible notion that the images are actually anti-Semitic with a bird’s beak standing in for the Jewish nose trope and the claim that the ears on the “birds” are reminiscent of pigs’ ears. Generally, those claiming halackhic, or more particular pietistic reasons, do so because they are unable “to conceive of such a bizarre and fanciful treatment of the human image as emerging from anywhere other than the twisted and febrile imagination of religious fanatics.”[14] But, in reality the use of bird’s head in lieu of human “reflects a liberal halakhic position rather than an extreme one.”[15] The camp of Yehuda ha–Hassid would ban all human, animal and celestial depictions, a more liberal position from this perspective permits animal images.