Lot 20

Siddur (prayerbook), in Hebrew, manuscript on vellum

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

88 leaves (1 blank), 135mm. by 93mm., wanting some leaves at beginning and a few leaves throughout (perhaps slightly misbound), collation: i^{10, ii^{1, iii^{8, iv^{1, v^{12, vi-ix^{10, x-xi^{8, small horizontal catchwords, written space 91mm. by 62mm., single column, 18 lines of dark brown ink in delicate Italian Ashkenazi script, with nikkud, a number of titles and entire sections embellished with contemporary organic designs with flowers and seed-pods in same ink (fols. 6r, 23v, 31r, 34r, 36v, 37v: a full border to a prayer, 37r, 41r: a crown over the incipit, 49v, 49r, 53r, 73v, 75r) a small Italian knotwork design at the end of the text, first few leaves slightly discoloured and brittle, small hole in fol. 55, else in good condition, in vellum binding over pasteboards}}}}}}}

Catalogue Note

text

The prayers here include the Sabbath prayers, the Song of the Sea, the uncensored Aleinu prayer, the Psalms, prayers for Passover (including one by the Spanish philosopher and poet Yehuda Halevi, d. 1141, for the Sabbath before Passover), and the Day of Atonement prayers according to the Italian rite.

The presence of the uncensored Aleinu prayer (fol. 19r), which is still recited at the end of each of the three daily Jewish services, is an interesting and rare feature, showing that the volume managed to evade the censor's knife. This prayer proclaims the reader's duty to praise the Master of all, who made the Jews different from the other nations of the world as the others "bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to an impotent god". Christians in the late medieval period came to believe that this last line referred to them, and so it was commonly censored and excised from existing books owned by Jews living under Christian rule.