Complete Cycle of Haftarot (Prophetic Readings), [Spain, 14th century]

Extraordinarily rare standalone copy of the Haftarot, reflecting the customs of the Jews of Spain.

The haftarah is the ancient synagogue custom, attested already in Second Temple times, of reading a selection from the Prophets in conjunction with the weekly or festival Torah portion, typically chosen for its thematic resonance with the day’s lection. In the medieval period, there was no universally fixed sequence, and different Jewish communities developed their own orders and selections. Haftarot were often included in copies of the Bible or prayer books, but the present volume, preserving the Spanish (Sephardic) rite, is an example of a standalone collection. Examples from the fourteenth century containing the complete annual cycle are extremely rare, and only one other comparable haftarot manuscript is known (National Library of Israel, Ms. Yah. 119).

Bound at the front and back of the volume are two bifolia from a fifteenth-century fragment of an Ashkenazi prayer book containing liturgical hymns (yotzerot) for the Yom Kippur services (the terminal one bound upside down). The hymns are accompanied by an unpublished running marginal commentary, which closely matches the text of a manuscript preserved in Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (Cod. hebr. 132).

Physical Description

124 folios on parchment (195 x 150 mm); Sephardic square Hebrew script; 16 lines to the page; fully vocalized and with cantillation marks. Foliation: later hand 1–123, with 100 repeated (for a total of 124 leaves). Collation: 15 quires of four bifolia each (8 leaves), plus one added bifolium at the front and one at the back; catchwords at the end of quires.

Binding: later decoratively blind-stamped brown morocco; spine with four raised bands and gilt title; gilt edges and turn-ins; patterned cloth endpapers.

Provenance

The Chicago Theological Seminary; Current owner.

Literature

Otto Lehman, “The Hebrew Treasures of the Chicago Theological Seminary,” The Chicago Theological Seminary Register 57:5 (1996), 1–10.

Daniel Goldschmidt ed., Machzor According to the Customs of the Ashkenazim in All Their Branches (Jerusalem, 1970).

Elisabeth Hollender, Clavis Commentariorum of Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in Manuscript (Leiden/Boston, 2005).