SEFER HUKKAT HA-PESAH (PASSOVER HAGGADAH ACCORDING TO THE SEPHARDIC RITE), JERUSALEM: ISRAEL BEN ABRAHAM [BAK], 1843

The second Haggadah printed in Jerusalem.

Beginning in 1793, Livornese printers issued a series a Passover Haggadot, of more or less the same content, under the title Hukkat ha-pesah (The Law of the Passover). The 1839 edition published by Moses Jeshuah Toviana, which improved upon its immediate predecessors of 1800 and 1815 by including the Song of Songs and Judeo-Arabic instructions for parts of the Seder composed by Moroccan Rabbi Abraham Ankawa (b. 1810), proved so popular that a second edition appeared at the press of a rival Livornese publisher, Eliezer Menahem Ottolenghi, that same year. Naturally, copies of the latter Haggadah also sold out, necessitating the reprinting of Sefer hukkat ha-pesah at the Jerusalem press of Israel Bak only a few years later. Aside from the text of the Seder ritual itself, the volume includes various prayers and biblical readings for the period beginning with the start of the month of Nisan and culminating on the first night of Shavuot. It also contains the entirety of Pirkei avot and Ka‘arat kesef (The Silver Plate), an educational-ethical poem in one hundred thirty verses by Rabbi Jehoseph Ezobi (latter half of the thirteenth century), written originally in Perpignan on the occasion of his son Samuel’s wedding.