Mahzor for Yom Kippur and Sukkot according to the French Rite. Scribe: Hayyim ben Yitzhak [13th-14th century]

242 leaves (10 1/8 x 7 3/8 inches; 255 x 187 mm), ruled and pricked, 21 lines, in two columns, written in black ink on parchment in Ashkenazic script; monumental script (ff. 204v-206v), decorated initial words (ff. 7v, 37r, 99r-100v, 103r,108r), decorated initial letter, partially cut (f. 161v), catchwords, some set within grotesques (ff. 8r-8v, 22v, 30v, 38v, 102v, 110v, 124v, 156v, 172v), modern foliation in pencil, some  remains of early ink foliation ; censored (ff. 11v, 113v, 143v, 191v, 212v), polemical texts excised (ff. 64, 77); ff. 4-5 misbound (now laid in loose at end of ms following f.242); ff.  9-14, 115 (paper),184-187, 210-213, 218) from other manuscripts; ff. 190-91, 193-94 extended with lost text replaced; fols. 51-52,126-127, text written to conform with natural contours of parchment; f. 231v, new text pasted over, though in original scribal hand; ff. 1-8, 118, 188, 192, 242 mended.  Library buckram; spine detached.

Nathan ben Shmuel Segre(?), loaned the ms. in 1589 to Eliezer ben Moshe?, fol. 9r; — Isaac Giron, purchased the ms from the widow of Menzah Montel (owners’ inscriptions, fols. 10r, 226r); Solomon Halberstam (shelf no. 359); Jews’ College, Ramsgate (Hirschfeld catalogue #202); Important Hebrew Manuscripts from the Montefiore Endowment, October 27 & 28, 2004, Sotheby's sale catalogue, lot 161.

Hartwig Hirschfeld, Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew MSS of the Montefiore Library, London:1904 (ms. no. 202); used by Daniel Goldschmidt and Yonah Fraenkel in their scholarly edition of the Yom Kippur and Sukkot Mahzor (see Rosh Hashanah Mahzor, 1970, p. 54 and Sukkot Mahzor, 1981, p. 47); A. Fraenkel, Leket Piyyutei Selihot, 1993, p. 22; N. Wieder, The Formation of Jewish Liturgy in the East and the West, 1998, pp. 153,263,271,427 (in Hebrew).

The present manuscript contains the liturgy for Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Hanukkah, according to the French rite.  A remarkably similar liturgical manuscript, a Mahzor for Rosh ha-Shanah, is currently in the collection of the British Library (Or. 2733.) Paleographic and codicological evidence clearly show that these two volumes were penned by the same scribe, and originally constituted a single, larger work. In this volume, the scribe explicitly identifies himself as Hayyim, son of the martyr, Isaac, in a colophon found on f. 209v. He employs the scribal technique, common in many medieval Hebrew manuscripts, of applying distinguishing marks to the letters of his name in a dozen instances, throughout the manuscript (ff.1r, 37r,40r,44r, 46v, 54v, 73r, 98r, 123r, 129r, 154r, 166v.) In addition to the Mahzor, Hayyim, son of the martyr, Isaac is known to have written a Pentateuch with Megillot and Haftarot, now housed in the Vatican (Borgiana 17.)

The present manuscript may well be the most important extant source of the liturgical rite of medieval French Jewry, an early and ancient tradition, no longer practiced. While it served as an important source for the scholarly editions of the Yom Kippur and Sukkot Mahzor compiled by Daniel Goldschmidt and Yonah Fraenkel, many of the unique traditions, prayers and customs found in this volume, have yet to be explored.

Among the manuscript’s unusual readings, it features pores sukkah shalom alenu ve-al yerushalayim and zokhreinu le-hayyim tovim in the evening prayers of Shabbat and holidays (fol. 1r).  It also contains some unusual forms such as reshut le-hotem torah, le-hotem bereshit (instead of the usual hatan, see fol. 220), and ligmor et hallel (written without the definite article, on fol. 212v).  Additionally, the manuscript features kaddish le-naar (fols. 208r, 209v) along with some striking and controversial variants to avinu malkenu (fol. 88v), and variants of al het written on the margin (fols. 86r, 148r).  It also offers the reason for sounding the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur, namely, zekher le-yovel (fol. 208r).

In addition to these and several other examples of variant readings and alternative text placements, there are customs and traditions recorded in this volume that are unknown from any other source. These include the use of the closing benediction of Mekadesh Yisrael ba-Rabim instead of Mekadesh et Shemo ba-Rabim.

However, the most striking unique reading in the present Mahzor is the recitation of the polemical verses beginning Shefokh Hamatkha al ha-Goyim (f.21r). These verses, most closely associated with Passover, are used here as part of the tradition of reciting Piyyutei Shamta, polemical liturgical poetry directed against non-Jews, as a part of the Yom Kippur service. The origins of the liturgical use of Shfokh Hamatkha as a specifically anti-Christian polemic in the Passover Haggadah are firmly founded in the Ancient French rite. Their appearance here as part of the Yom Kippur service is, to the best of our knowledge, unknown from any other source.

A comprehensive Hebrew report on the manuscript, authored by Dr. Israel Mordechai Peles of the Mercaz le-Heker Kitvei Yad, is available upon request.