Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 122. TIKKUN LAILAH (COLLECTION OF NIGHTTIME PRAYERS), [EDITED BY WOLF HEIDENHEIM], SCRIBE: ELIEZER SUSSMAN MESERITSCH, FRANKFURT AM MAIN: [FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY].

TIKKUN LAILAH (COLLECTION OF NIGHTTIME PRAYERS), [EDITED BY WOLF HEIDENHEIM], SCRIBE: ELIEZER SUSSMAN MESERITSCH, FRANKFURT AM MAIN: [FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY]

Auction Closed

November 20, 08:47 PM GMT

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

TIKKUN LAILAH (COLLECTION OF NIGHTTIME PRAYERS), [EDITED BY WOLF HEIDENHEIM], SCRIBE: ELIEZER SUSSMAN MESERITSCH, FRANKFURT AM MAIN: [FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY]


11 folios (6 3/4 x 4 1/8 in.; 172 x 105 mm) (collation: i-ii4, iii2 +1) on parchment; modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corner of recto; written in elegant nineteenth-century Ashkenazic square (text body) and semi-cursive (rubrics) scripts in black ink; ruled in blind; justification via dilation and contraction of letters and insertion of space fillers; no catchwords or headers; vocalization of most liturgical texts; accentuation of the Shema only. Incipits and emphasized texts enlarged; simple border and checkered-pattern lettering on f. [1]; simple section divisions between some prayers; ornamental closing pen-line drawing on f. 11v. Slight scattered staining; thumbing on ff. 1r-6r; occasional minor smudging of ink. Original paper wrappers and flyleaves, rebound in modern black blind-tooled calf; title lettered in gilt on upper board; spine in five compartments with raised bands; title and place lettered in gilt on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns. Housed in a matching gilt-tooled black calf slipcase, slightly scuffed.


An artistically-executed nighttime liturgy.


The Talmud states that those wishing to retire for the night should recite the first paragraph of the Shema and a prayer to God, “Who causes the bands of sleep to fall upon my eyes” (Berakhot 60b). With time, and especially under the influence of Kabbalah, additional biblical verses, psalms, and devotional formulae were added to these two elements in a ritual meant to petition the Divine for protection while sleeping. Wolf Heidenheim (1757-1832), a prominent scholar of the Hebrew Bible and of Jewish liturgy, published a well-edited and partially-translated collection of these prayers under the title Tikkun lailah in 1822 at his press in Rödelheim, a city district of Frankfurt am Main. The book went through at least four more editions in the years that followed.


The present lot, a beautiful manuscript version of this book (without the German translation), belonged to Herz Marcus Oppenheimer (b. 1785), a Frankfurt-based dealer (together with Abraham Joseph Kirchberg) in precious stones, jewelry, and watches. It was copied by Eliezer Sussman Meseritsch, scribe of at least twelve other known manuscripts, including the famous Charlotte Rothschild Haggadah and another Haggadah sold in our New York rooms in December 2010 (both now housed in the Braginsky Collection in Zurich). In his memoirs, the master painter Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800-1882) referred to Meseritsch as “the best Jewish calligrapher of his time,” a description worthy of the creator of this work.


Provenance

Herr Herz Marcus Oppenheimer (original front flyleaf)


Literature

M.L. Ettinghausen, “Some Extracts from the Memoirs of an Octogenarian Jewish Bookseller,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 21 (1968): 190-201, at p. 190.


Dalia Marx, Be-et ishan ve-a‘irah: al tefillot bein yom u-bein lailah (Tel Aviv: Yedi‘ot Aharonot; Sifrei Hemed, 2010).


Emile Schrijver and Falk Wiesemann (eds.), Schöne Seiten: jüdische Schriftkultur aus der Braginsky Collection (Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2011), 76-77 (no. 15), 78, 80 (no. 16).