PASSOVER HAGGADAH ACCORDING TO THE ASHKENAZIC AND SEPHARDIC RITES, AMSTERDAM: ASHER ANSHEL BEN ELIEZER HAZZAN AND ISSACHAR BER BEN ABRAHAM ELIEZER, 1695

The first edition of the enormously-influential Amsterdam Haggadah, the first Haggadah illustrated with copperplate engravings.

Moses Kosman ben Elijah, the son of a wealthy merchant and banker who had opened a short-lived printing business in 1688, rented his publishing materials to the partners Asher Anshel and Issachar Ber beginning in 1692. These two men would issue a range of works together until 1703, after which Asher Anshel continued on his own for the following decade before his retirement.

The present lot is a “bicultural” Passover Haggadah that, while somewhat influenced by the Venice, 1629 edition (see lot 44), also charted new territory by developing a distinctive iconography. As noted by the printers, the old Venetian Haggadot were no longer readily available, and so a new model was needed. This was supplied by the artist Abram bar Jacob “of the family of our forefather Abraham,” apparently a German cleric who had converted to Judaism in Amsterdam. Instead of using traditional woodcuts, Bar Jacob created copperplate engravings, whose superiority over their predecessors “is like the advantage of light over darkness” (Eccl. 2:13). Bar Jacob borrowed the vast majority of his illustrations from the Swiss engraver Matthäus Merian, who was in turn inspired by the German painter Hans Holbein. He displayed his originality, however, in a few instances: he included a depiction of a young Abram smashing his father’s idols; he added an image of Abram crossing the river into Canaan in the background of his portrayal of the arrival of the three angels; and he grouped the Four Sons together in one plate, whereas up until that point they had been pictured separately.

The Haggadah text is accompanied by an abridged version of Don Isaac Abrabanel’s (1437-1508) Zevah pesah (Passover Sacrifice; see lots 19, 206), different from that appearing in the aforementioned Venice edition, as well as an esoteric commentary culled from Rabbi Isaiah ha-Levi Horowitz’s (ca. 1565-1630) Sefer shenei luhot ha-berit (see lots 79, 85). Its instructions are given in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino, and two versions of the korekh (sandwich) formula and birkat ha-mazon (grace after meals) are printed to accommodate the variances between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic rites. The volume closes with Bar Jacob’s engraved Hebrew map of the itinerary of the Israelites in the Wilderness and their entry into the Land of Israel – one of the earliest printed Hebrew maps – modeled on the cartographic work of Christian Kruik van Adrichem. This Haggadah would be reprinted in Amsterdam in 1712, and its illustrations would go on to be imitated more than those of any other Haggadah in history.

Provenance

David Wahl (front flyleaf)

Literature

Harold Brodsky, “The Seventeenth-Century Haggadah Map of Avraham bar Yaacov,” Jewish Art 19-20 (1993-1994): 149-157.

Harold Brodsky, “Clues to The Hidden Midrash on Bar Yaacov's Hebrew Map,” Israeli Map Collectors Society Journal 13 (July 1996): 36-43.

Amir Cahanovitc, “Mappot be-haggadot pesah” (M.Ed. thesis, Achva Academic College, 2015), 34-85.

David Frankel, “Illustration, Allusion, and Commentary: Choosing the Four Sons in 1695,” Images 4 (2010): 18-24.

Lajb Fuks and Renate G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands[,] 1585-1815: Historical Evaluation and Descriptive Bibliography, vol. 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), 382-388, 397-398 (no. 521).

A.M. Habermann, “The Jewish Art of the Printed Book,” in Cecil Roth (ed.), Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, revis. Bezalel Narkiss (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1971), 163-174, at p. 173.

Marvin J. Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, vol. 2 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 1276-1277.

Abraham J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress (New York: Rizzoli; Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1991), 78-80, 82-83.

Cecil Roth, “Ha-haggadah ha-metsuyyeret she-bi-defus,” Areshet 3 (1961): 7-30, at pp. 22-25.

Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, Sifrei yesod: sifrei ha-yesod shel ha-sifriyyah ha-yehudit ha-toranit (n.p.: Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, 2019), 128 (no. 454).

Vinograd, Amsterdam 627

Avraham Yaari, Bibli’ogerafyah shel haggadot pesah me-reshit ha-defus ve-ad ha-yom (Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrman, 1960), 7-8 (no. 59).

Avraham Yaari, “Gerim bi-melekhet ha-kodesh,” in Mehkerei sefer: perakim be-toledot ha-sefer ha-ivri (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1968), 245-255, at p. 250.

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2005), plates 59-62, 67, 69.

Isaac Yudlov, Otsar ha-haggadot: bibli’ogerafyah shel haggadot pesah me-reshit ha-defus ha-ivri ad shenat [5]720 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 11 (no. 93).