Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
BIRKHOT HA-HAFTARAH (BLESSINGS RECITED OVER THE LECTION FROM THE PROPHETS), SCRIBE: ELIJAH BUNIMOWITSCH, FRANKFURT AM MAIN: 1889
Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
BIRKHOT HA-HAFTARAH (BLESSINGS RECITED OVER THE LECTION FROM THE PROPHETS), SCRIBE: ELIJAH BUNIMOWITSCH, FRANKFURT AM MAIN: 1889
4 folios (11 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.; 293 x 210 mm) on parchment; no foliation; written in elegant nineteenth-century Ashkenazic square (text body) and semi-cursive (some rubrics) scripts in black ink; ruled in blind; justification via insertion of hyphens; no catchwords; most liturgical texts vocalized. Incipits and emphasized texts enlarged; each page of text within a unique decorative geometric frame; elaborate word panels at the start of each section; ornate dedicatory cartouche near foot of f. [4r]; each folio backed with white silk-lined card and individually hinged. Slight scattered staining; minor thumbing; some warping of card and chipping of ink. Contemporary elaborately gilt-tooled brown calf with foliate borders, bound by Th. Schnell, Frankfurt A/M, somewhat worn at corners and hinges; title lettered in gilt on upper board; upper board and flyleaf detached from body of book; turn-ins gilt; contemporary patterned flyleaves and pastedowns. Housed in a modern maroon cloth folding case, lightly scuffed.
A deluxe manuscript of the haftarah liturgy.
This meticulously-penned and beautifully-decorated book of blessings would have been kept on the bimah (Torah reader’s desk) in a synagogue. Those individuals honored by being called up to read the haftarah (lection from the Prophets) were expected to recite certain of these benedictions beforehand and afterward, depending on the occasion (Sabbath, public fast, pilgrimage festival, Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur). Two interesting textual features of this work are the inclusion of the words ve-tikkom nakam (avenge the vengeance) in the second post-haftarah blessing and the varying customs cited regarding the conclusion of the fourth blessing on Yom Kippur (with specific reference to the practice in Frankfurt).
Elijah Bunimowitsch was a professional scribe and is known to have copied a Torah scroll on behalf of Baron Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild (1828-1901), the last head of the Rothschild bank branch in Frankfurt and a major philanthropist. After Rothschild’s passing, many of the books he collected were transferred to the Universitätsbibliothek in Frankfurt, which now holds four Bunimowitsch manuscripts, one of which was written for Rothschild on the occasion of his seventieth birthday in 1898. The present lot, executed in Bunimowitsch’s signature decorative style and bound by a Frankfurt-based bookbinder (like at least one of those manuscripts in the collection of the Universitätsbibliothek and another sold in our New York rooms in 2012), includes a dedicatory cartouche at the end (dated 13 Marheshvan [5]650 [November 7, 1889]) with a space left blank for insertion of a name, suggesting that the scribe may have produced at least some of his deluxe liturgical artworks as gifts.
Literature
Ernst Róth and Leo Prijs, Hebräische Handschriften: Die Handschriften der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, vol. 1B (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990), 138 (no. 237), 139 (no. 238), 168 (no. 259).
Ernst Róth and Leo Prijs, Hebräische Handschriften: Die Handschriften der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, vol. 1C (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993), 67-68 (no. 333).
MS Frankfurt a. M. Universitätsbibliothek, Qu. 38 (http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/mshebr/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:2-11327)
MS Frankfurt a. M. Universitätsbibliothek, Oct. 229 (http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/mshebr/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:2-10144)
MS Frankfurt a. M. Universitätsbibliothek, Oct. 230 (http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/mshebr/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:2-10159)
MS Frankfurt a. M. Universitätsbibliothek, Oct. 251 (http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/mshebr/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:2-10427)