Haggadah shel Pesah = Service for the Two First Nights of Passover, Translated by David Levi, London: D. Levi, 1794

1r-39r, 7pp. = 42 folios (84 pages) (8 1/8 x 5 in.; 206 x 127 mm). Hebrew and English on facing pages; instructions in Hebrew, English, and often Ladino; Yiddish translations of three hymns at the rear. Slight scattered staining and/or foxing (see esp. ff. 8r, 14v-17r); small tears in lower edges of ff. 23-24, 30. Modern boards, flyleaves, and pastedowns; first twenty leaves printed on light blue-tinted paper.

A rare copy of the precursor to the first American Haggadah.

With the steady assimilation of English Jews toward the end of the eighteenth century and the resulting decline in their knowledge of Hebrew and other Jewish languages like Judezmo and Yiddish, it became obvious that Judaism could survive in England only in translation. Answering this call of duty, David Levi (1740/1742-1801), a British-born Orthodox Ashkenazic autodidact, set to work on a number of translation projects. He collaborated on a new Pentateuch translation intended for synagogal use (1787), rendered both the Sephardic (1789-1793) and Ashkenazic (1794-1796) liturgies in English, and produced the present work, a Passover Haggadah.

This “bicultural” volume, suitable for use by both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, built off of, and improved upon, the very first English translation of the Haggadah ever published, which was printed by Alexander Alexander (d. ca. 1807) in London in 1770. Like Alexander, Levi included Hebrew and English on facing pages (through f. 35r), instructions in Ladino at various points throughout the Seder, and Yiddish translations of Addir hu and Had gadya at the rear (Levi also added a Yiddish version of Ehad mi yodea); but while Alexander printed two separate Haggadot, one for Ashkenazim and the other for Sephardim, Levi integrated the common elements of each rite and, where they differed (e.g., korekh and birkat ha-mazon), printed alternate versions of the same text preceded by special rubrics. In addition, Levi’s Haggadah also featured seven pages of explanatory notes in English at the back.

Like some of Levi’s other translations, this edition of the traditional Passover liturgy became the standard translation for English Jews and would serve as the basis for future publications in both England and North America. In fact, the first American Haggadah, published by S. H. Jackson in New York City in 1837 with the title Seder haggadah shel pesah meturgam mi-leshon ha-kodesh li-leshon englatera (2nd ed.: 1850), was essentially a reprint of Levi’s edition. For this reason, the Service for the Two First Nights of Passover remains a hugely important milestone in the histories of both British Jewry and Jewish liturgical translation writ large.

Provenance

M. Gaster (f. [1v])

Literature

Joseph Jacobs and Lucien Wolf, Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica: A Bibliographical Guide to Anglo-Jewish History (London: Office of the “Jewish Chronicle,” 1888), 175 (no. 1535).

Richard H. Popkin, “David Levi, Anglo-Jewish Theologian,” Jewish Quarterly Review 87,1-2 (1996): 79-101.

Cecil Roth, “Ha-defus ha-ivri be-london: nissayon bibli’ogerafi,” Kiryat sefer 14,1-3 (1937): 97-104, 379-387, at p. 379 (no. 70).

David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Simeon Singer, “Early Translations and Translators of the Jewish Liturgy in England,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 3 (1896-1898): 36-71, at pp. 56-71.

Vinograd, London 137

Avraham Yaari, Bibli’ogerafyah shel haggadot pesah me-reshit ha-defus ve-ad ha-yom (Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrman, 1960), 25 (no. 254).

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2005), plates 74, 93.

Isaac Yudlov, Otsar ha-haggadot: bibli’ogerafyah shel haggadot pesah me-reshit ha-defus ha-ivri ad shenat [5]720 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 33 (no. 371).