SC - Medieval Passover Haggadahs

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

>What first struck me when I saw these lists of specific foods was
>how much it reminded me of Adamantius' descriptions of the Chinese
>New Years Feast/Celebrations that he has described here. But perhaps
>there is a lot of simularity between many symbolic/traditional meals.

I'd say only in as much as the foods are meaningful to the culture.

>  > I hope i haven't offended anyone by posting this. I've tried to leave
>>  out most of the religious content. You can see why some folks have
>>  remarked how it would be difficult to have a Passover dinner with out
>>  the religious ritual part, but i think it could be done. Less
>>  blessing, more fressing.
>
>Not me. I find it interesting and yes, amusing. This is not meant to
>be rude, but I often find many religious traditions, particularly the
>nit-picking on what seem to inconsequental details, to be
>incomprehensible, and just say "well, it's tradition".

Well, there are clear "reasons" for each of the foods in the meal - 
the symbolism of the food and its place in the whole story are told 
during the Seder. I left it out because of religious content.

>How anyone
>can kill over these things, also seems difficult.

Yeah, i'm constantly astonished by what humans do to each other for 
reasons that don't seem worth killing over, but then, i'm an American 
who believes in tolerance and acceptance of differences and i enjoy 
the heterogeneity of our society. I realize that many folks feel 
safer in a homogeneous society, but that just seems so limited and 
limiting to me - but, as i said, i'm an American. Being in a country 
where people are mostly ethnically similar seems strange, but i also 
value traditional communities...

>It is an example
>of how difficult it is to get into a persona.

And some of why i picked mine: a time and place of comparative 
tolerance and an ethnically and religiously mixed culture.

>  > OB Medieval: there are several extant illuminated Medieval Haggadahs.
>
>When and where were these done? Were these done by Jews or non-Jews?

Done by Jews.

I have facsimile copies of:
the Rylands Haggadah, a mid-14th c. Sephardic haggadah from Catalonia 
(in the John Rylands College Library of the University of Manchester)
and
the Ashkenazi Haggadah, a mid-15th century haggadah, written and 
illuminated by Joel ben Simeon, called Feibusch Ashkenazi.

OK, so technically these are Renaissance, not Medieval, haggadahs :-)

A very important illuminated haggadah is/was in Serajevo and was 
saved, with risk of life, by non-Jews there when the city was bombed 
by the Serbians not so long ago. (the epynomous Serajevo Haggadah)

Each uses illumination techniques and styles typical of their time 
and place. Significantly both are written in Hebrew, but most of the 
art is not distinctly Jewish. There are things here and there... Like 
the man searching for chometz in the Ashkenazi. I'm not sure how 
different the 5 rabbis at the beginning of the Maggid look from other 
men of their class...

The Rylands has scenes that suggest that men ate separately from 
women and children, others that show the kosher slaughter of a sheep,

I'm not sure when haggadahs were first created. Given the physical 
stuff on the table and the order of the Seder - well, one is a 
mnemonic for the other and it is possible that there was a long oral 
tradition before they got written down - but i'm just conjecturing, i 
haven't researched this...

Others - that i only have pictures from - show ritual table ware and 
other Jewish cultural aspects, but the styles of each are typical, as 
i said, of their time and place of production.

>I think this could shed some light on relations between the two groups.
>Assuming these were not satires, and were done by non-Jews, perhaps
>it might point to relations being better than the Inquistion and
>similar things would indicate.

There is some suggestion, through the quality of some of the work 
(not the highest, but better than amateur), and the extreme 
similarity in some cases between specific Haggadah pages and pages in 
Christian works, that Jews may have practiced these arts in workshops 
among professional calligraphers and illuminators.

But this is getting WAAAY off topic... except that Pesach will soon 
be here. After all, there's a definite relationship between the date 
of Easter and the date of Passover. And there's that pesky Paschal 
lamb...

Anahita