Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

The Sarajevo Haggadah

Sarajevo: Rabic, 2010. Completely New Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. Unpaginated. Three quarter leather over decorative paper-covered boards resting in decorative gold and red clamshell box with gold lettering. With 32-page text booklet in English, being a short history of the first 650 years of the work and analysis of each painting. New color facsimile of the celebrated 14th-century illuminated manuscript from Spain, unique among Haggadahs for telling Torah stories (with Talmudic interpretations) prior to the Passover text. Originally painted on goat-skin vellum, the first 69 pictures illustrate the creation (with the world depicted as a sphere) through the exodus, followed by 78 Hebrew text pages handwritten in Sephardic style, with lavishly decorated initials and painted figures, including a seder scene. Perhaps created for the wedding of the prominent Elazar and Shoshan families (the Barcelona “coat of arms” page includes medallions of a rose and a wing), the medieval manuscript came to Sarajevo in 1894, a city in which people of many faiths had been living peacefully for three centuries, where it was purchased by the Zemmaljski muzej (National Museum). Surviving the expulsion, the Inquisition, two World Wars and the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the manuscript has seen many seders, as evidenced by the occasional charming wine stain as reproduced in this facsimile. vg. Item #36267
ISBN: 9789958330377

Price: $225.00

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