The Rothschild Haggadah

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ritten in northern Italy in 1479, this Haggadah is one of the most exquisite sections of the Israel Museum’s Rothschild Miscellany, a manuscript unrivalled in richness and scope.

Medieval Haggadot are among the most extensively decorated of all types of Hebrew manuscript, but the Rothschild Haggadah is exceptional by any standard for its elegant and elaborate illustrations of the Passover story. The original owner, Moses ben Yekutiel Hacohen, must have been a prosperous man who commissioned a manuscript to reflect his sophisticated and learned background, because the manuscript is remarkable not only for the fine quality of its illumination but for the richness of its marginal texts.

This copiously illuminated and illustrated Haggadah comprises the Ashkenazi Passover-eve service as we know it today (except for Grace after Meals which was deliberately omitted by the scribe) as the main text in the centre of the page. In the margins is Maimonides’ Hilkhot Hamez Umatsah, ‘Laws Concerning Leavened and Unleavened Bread’ a classical survey of Passover and its ceremonies. In addition, the exquisitely illuminated section devoted to the piyyutim - the liturgical poems and songs ‘for all four evenings of the festival of Passover has been included, in the margins of which is a medieval text on weights and measures.

The texts of the Haggadah and of the piyyutim have been translated by Professor Raphael Loewe (Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew Emeritus, University College London) and Jeremy Schonfield (Mason Lecturer, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies). Two of the sequences of piyyutim translated by Professor Loewe into English verse have never been made available in English before. Jeremy Schonfield has written an informative introduction to the texts in the manuscript and to the themes of Passover. The translation of Maimonides’s treatise on Passover by Solomon Gandz and Hyman Klein is also included. Iris Fishof, Chief Curator of Judaica and Jewish Ethnography, Israel Museum, has provided a foreword in which she gives the background to the acquisition of this manuscript, one of the Israel Museum’s greatest treasures.

The facsimile volume is 44 pages, size 210 x 156 approximately. All pages are illuminated with raised burnished gold, flat gold, powdered gold and brilliant, delicate colours.

A special paper was milled to reproduce exactly the texture, opacity and thickness of the vellum (uterine) on which the manuscript was written.

Gold foil leaf has been applied to a raised surface on each page using a special hand process that closely replicates the burnished gold of the original. Powdered gold was applied to all the illustrations that contain it in the original manuscript.

The facsimile is bound in a fine vellum skin. The companion volume is printed on a classical Ingres laid paper, elegantly bound to complement the facsimile. Both volumes are presented in a hand-made slip-case.

The facsimile is strictly limited to 400 numbered and 150 ‘ad personam’ copies. Each volume is discreetly numbered by hand using steel dies and is accompanied by a numbered certificate carrying the seal of the Israel Museum.

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