Passover Haggadah According to the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Rites, with the Rare Map of the Holy Land.

The second edition of the enormously influential Amsterdam Haggadah.

In 1695, a Passover Haggadah was published in Amsterdam that charted new territory by developing a distinctive iconography. As noted by the printers, the old Haggadot printed in Venice were no longer readily available, and so a new publication was needed. The illustrations were supplied by the artist Abram bar Jacob, “of the family of our forefather Abraham,” a German cleric who had converted to Judaism in Amsterdam. Instead of using traditional woodcuts, Abraham bar Jacob created superior copperplate engravings. He modeled the vast majority of his illustrations on those created by the Swiss engraver Matthäus Merian, who was in turn inspired by the German painter Hans Holbein. He displayed his originality, however, in a few instances: he included a depiction of a young Abram smashing his father’s idols; he added an image of Abram crossing the river into Canaan in the background of his portrayal of the arrival of the three angels; and he grouped the Four Sons together in a single image.

In the 1695 edition, the Haggadah text was accompanied by an abridged version of Don Isaac Abarbanel’s (1437–1508) Zevah Pesah, together with a short esoteric commentary, and its instructions were given in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. Two versions of the korekh (“sandwich”) formula and birkat ha‑mazon (“grace after meals”) were printed to accommodate the variances between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic rites. The volume closed with Abraham bar Jacob’s engraved Hebrew map of the Holy Land that traced the itinerary of the Israelites in the Wilderness and their entry into the Land of Israel. It is one of the earliest printed Hebrew maps of the Holy Land.

The present 1712 edition, printed by Solomon Proops, is a slightly altered reprint of that influential 1695 Amsterdam Haggadah. It essentially preserves Abraham bar Jacob’s copperplate cycle and his large folding Hebrew map of the Holy Land, while introducing a new engraved title page with Moses at the Burning Bush, additional historiated woodcut initials, and adapted cycles of illustrations for the stages of the Seder and the progression of the Ten Plagues. In addition to Abarbanel’s Zevah Pesah and the mystical commentary of the first printing, this edition contains a further commentary culled from a range of sources. The volume also retains the trilingual directions in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. In subsequent years, the illustrations of the Amsterdam Haggadot would achieve great popularity and go on to be imitated more than those of any other Haggadah in history.

Physical Description

Folio (287 x 185 mm); [1], 31 folios on paper, with an intricately engraved fold-out map of the exodus from Egypt and the entry into the Land of Canaan. Engraved title page featuring Moses and Aaron flanking the text, surmounted by a vignette of Moses kneeling in awe at the Burning Bush; one full-page engraved cycle of illustrations of the stages of the Seder on f. 2r; fifteen half-page engraved illustrations on ff. 5v, 6r, 7v, 8r, 9v, 10v, 11r, 12r, 12v, 13r, 14v, 15r, 16r, 23r, 29r; woodcut ornaments on ff. [1r], 20r; numerous woodcut historiated initials. 

Binding: later black calf-backed paper boards.

Literature

Harold Brodsky, “The Seventeenth-Century Haggadah Map of Avraham bar Yaacov,” Jewish Art 19-20 (1993-1994): 149-157.

Harold Brodsky, “Clues to The Hidden Midrash on Bar Yaacov’s Hebrew Map,” Israeli Map Collectors Society Journal 13 (July 1996): 36-43.

Amir Cahanovitc, “Mappot be-haggadot pesah” (M.Ed. thesis, Achva Academic College, 2015), 34-85.

David Frankel, “Illustration, Allusion, and Commentary: Choosing the Four Sons in 1695,” Images 4 (2010): 18-24.

A.M. Habermann, “The Jewish Art of the Printed Book,” in Cecil Roth (ed.), Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, revis. Bezalel Narkiss (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1971), 163-174, at p. 173.

Abraham J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress (New York: Rizzoli; Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1991), 78-80, 82-83.

Cecil Roth, “Ha-haggadah ha-metsuyyeret she-bi-defus,” Areshet 3 (1961): 7-30, at pp. 22-25.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 949

Avraham Yaari, Bibli’ogerafyah shel haggadot pesah me-reshit ha-defus ve-ad ha-yom (Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrman, 1960), 9-10 (no. 73).

Avraham Yaari, “Gerim bi-melekhet ha-kodesh,” in Mehkerei sefer: perakim be-toledot ha-sefer ha-ivri (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1968), 245-255, at p. 250.

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2005), plates 59-62, 66-69.

Isaac Yudlov, Otsar ha-haggadot: bibli’ogerafyah shel haggadot pesah me-reshit ha-defus ha-ivri ad shenat [5]720 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 14 (no. 120).