Sefer Kuntres (Compendium of Synagogue Prayers) [Germany; Eighteenth Century]

9 leaves (9 3/8 x 7 1/2 in.; 237 x 190 mm). Written in brown ink on parchment in square and semicursive Askenazic Hebrew scripts; decorated and illustrated in gouache and brown ink. Title within rondel suspended from a crown tethered to two pillars evoking the staves of a Torah Scroll, the whole set within a floral latticework frame; marginal dampstain. Illustrations: f. 4v, 6v. Some cockling, staining and soiling. Cracked at hinges; final leaf loosely attached. Contemporary paper boards, defective and worn.



 

Jacob ben Eliezer--Benjamin ben Jacob of Schneidemühl donated the manuscript to the Synagogue of Swinemunde, Prussia (currently Świnoujście, Poland) in 1825--acquired by Joseph Jacoby, Herr Isenthal and M. Philipsohn.

The title of the present volume, Sefer Kuntres, is a rather inexact designation whose literal translation is "pamphlet" or "notebook." Below the title however, the text goes on to describe the work as one "in which you will find what is said on the bimah and what the hazzan chants."  The contents that follow in this slim volume include a wide variety of occasional prayers ranging from the regular, such as the weekly supplications recited by the precentor every Monday and Thursday and Sabbath hymns such as Lekha Dodi to the infrequent, such as the once-yearly recitation of the service for blowing the Shofar on Rosh ha-Shanah. Other prayers include the blessings for the new month, and the ancient Aramaic formulations entreating for the well- being of the sages and judges in Babylonia and the Land of Israel, as well as all the members of the local congregation. A prayer on behalf of the government is distinguished by the presence of one of two text illustrations (f. 4v.)

The text concludes with a register of deceased congregants whose names would be read at annual Yizkor services. Another, lengthy and particularly poignant memorial inscription is included in the present manuscript as well (f. 8r-v), a heartrending account of some of the atrocities perpetrated by the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Jews of Poland, and Lithuania during the mid seventeenth century. Though the massacres began as early as 1648, and persecutions would continue for nearly two decades, the present manuscript specifically deals with a series of heinous events which occurred in 1655.