HAPPY YOM HA’ATZMAUT! ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY!
Not that it’s getting ready to retire, but Israel is turning 64, oh, TOMORROW! This image of a postcard from Israel’s third birthday in 1951 seems like it comes from the distant past, what with the image of a Roman column.
Postcard celebrating Israeli Independence Day 1951, designed by R. Siedner, Collection of Yeshiva University Museum (1997.126), gift of Beverly Fettman
LAST CHANCE TO SEE GRAPHIC DETAILS - CONFESSIONAL COMICS BY JEWISH WOMEN
Closes Sunday!
Sophisticated yet raw, nakedly diaristic storytelling is what makes these comics so compelling. By turns funny, outrageous, poignant and embarrassingly intimate, the works reflect each of the 18 featured artist’s individual journeys refracted through a distinctively Jewish lens in a pop-culture art form. Some bare their bodies. Some expose their psyches. All are fearless about experiences, emotions, desires, romance and politics.
Featuring original work by 18 of the most influential creators, Graphic Details showcases work of all-stars from the pioneering Wimmen’s Comix and Twisted Sisters artists of the 1970s and 1980s to the superstars of the new generation. Many of the cartoons in Graphic Details have never been displayed in public until now. The artists, who hail from the U.S., Canada, Israel and the UK include: Vanessa Davis; Bernice Eisenstein; Sarah Glidden; Miriam Katin; Aline Kominsky-Crumb; Miss Lasko-Gross; Sarah Lazarovic; Miriam Libicki; Sarah Lightman; Diane Noomin; Corinne Pearlman; Trina Robbins; Racheli Rotner; Sharon Rudahl; Laurie Sandell; Ariel Schrag; Lauren Weinstein; and Ilana Zeffren.
Find out more at http://yumuseum.tumblr.com/GraphicDetails
Image: From I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, by Bernice Eisenstein, McClellan & Stewart Ltd., 2006.
DID YOU KNOW ABOUT YUM’S DAZZLING JUDAICA COLLECTION?
If you’ve been watching YUM’s posts for a while, you’ll likely have noticed that we have a lot of Jewish ceremonial and decorative objects. Well, we also have a special website for one of our collections, the Max Stern Collection of Judaica. Check it out on the collection’s site: http://www.yumuseum.org/maxsterncatalog/
During his lifetime, Mr. Stern (1898-1982)spent many enjoyable hours acquiring and assembling these Judaica pieces. Stern was a legend in his lifetime. Arriving in the United States as an immigrant from Fulda, Germany, he built up a major business – Hartz Mountain. But other than his acknowledged material success, he achieved his real and enduring greatness as a philanthropist for a variety of causes.
DOOR TO ANOTHER WORLD - THE BEN-EZRA SYNAGOGUE ARK DOOR
Coming to YU Museum in 2013, the Ben-Ezra Synagogue. Read on to find out more!
From “Treasures from the Ben Ezra Synagogue” on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Bizantium and Islam: Age of Transition exhibition blog.
by Yitzchak Schwartz, Research Associate, Yeshiva University
Monday, April 2, 2012
Several of the Jewish manuscripts on view in Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, including the example shown above, are thought to have come from the Cairo Genizah, a repository of communal, religious, and business documents housed in the attic of the tenth-century Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo that was re-discovered in 1896 by Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the Yeshiva University Museum in New York City co-own another treasure from the Ben Ezra Synagogue: one of the doors of the synagogue’s ark, the compartment where the scriptures are kept. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun (August 30, 2000), the door was discovered at an estate sale in central Florida in 1993 or 1994 and purchased for $37.50. After experts—including Byzantium and Islam catalogue contributor Steven Fine—identified the panel as originating from the Ben Ezra Synagogue, and testing confirmed that it dated to the eleventh century, it was acquired by the museums as a joint purchase.
Read the rest of this discussion on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Bizantium and Islam: Age of Transition exhibition blog.
Image: Panel from a Torah Shrine, ca. 1040. Cairo, Egypt. Wood (walnut) with traces of paint and gilt. 34 3/8 x 14 7/16 x 1 in. (87.3 x 36.7 x 2.5 cm). The Walters Art Museum and Yeshiva University Museum (64.181)
DOES WORK EVER FEEL LIKE IT’S SUCKING YOUR LIFE AWAY?
Day after day, night after night, sometimes work can grind you down. Fortunately if not ironically, the travails of what you might call “soul-sucking work” can lead to incredible artistic reactions… such as this combination of graphic work and poetry about life behind a sewing machine. Take a look below for the description, and test your German (and German script reading) skills!
Thanks 16thstreet!
Click on the images above to see enlarged versions for easier viewing/reading.
At the Sewing Machine (from Songs of the Ghetto)
Poem by Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923) with translation from Yiddish by Berthold Feiwel (1875-1937). Illustration by Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874-1925).
Berlin, Benjamin Harz Verlag ca. 1902.
Collection of Yeshiva University Museum (1996.023). Gift of Michael Cohn.
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A haunting image from the famed and groundbreaking Zionist artist Ephraim Moses Lilien sits next to a poem about what it was like for workers in one of the most common occupations for Jews at the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century: sewing. Work at the sewing machine, “Day after day,” and “Year after year” was indeed an occupation, but certainly not a healthy one, as poet Morris Rosenfeld and Lilien seem to argue. Rather, it was a way of working that ultimately robbed the body of its spirit, its vim and its vigor! This piece appeared in the intensely beautiful book, Lieder des Ghetto (Songs of the Ghetto), a poetic and graphic piece of from a Zionist point of view against what they saw as the spiritually and physically impoverished state of Jews in the Diaspora.
This book is currently displayed in YU Museum’s exhibition here at the Center, Trail of the Magic Bullet: The Jewish Encounter with Modern Medicine, 1860 – 1960, on view through August 2012. Click here to find out more about the show.
Submitted by Zachary Paul Levine, Yeshiva University Museum.
A PLATE FOR SEDER MADE OF PEWTER? I HARDLY KNOW’ER!
This plate is inscribed in Hebrew with the order of the Passover Seder, and in Yiddish identifying the owner “Guedaliah Leid, the son of Leib of Wanfried and his wife Rechele.” The owner’s initials also appear between the rampant lions on the outer rim. Other decorative motifs include depictions of Moses and Pharaoh, three of the four sons of the Haggadah, Miriam and Aaron. At the center is a depiction of the paschal lamb standing on an altar of burnt offerings. This plate is made out of pewter, an alloy composed of tin and zinc, with trace elements of copper or antimony used to strengthen the resulting alloy.
Passover plate. England (?), 1769. Pewter: cast, engraved. The Max Stern Collection. Collection of Yeshiva University Museum (1985.097).
ELIJAH? THAT GUY HAS ALL THE BEST CUPS…
There’s a lot of sacramental wine drinking during Passover—commemoration and thanks, not just revelry. But one dinner guest has a special cup: Elijah the prophet. During the Seder, we open the door to invite in this prophet, and we even leave a cup of wine for him. Elijah, in a sense, represents people without a community, people who are wandering, people who do not have a Seder. The cup is can be seen as an expression of welcome fro all those who are hungry and need a place to rest and recline.
Elijah’s Cup. Artist: Ismar David. Hebrew inscription: Elijah the prophet. Sterling silver; glass Gift of the Estate of Ismar David. Collection of Yeshiva University Museum (1997.539)
![THINK YOU GOT YOUR HAGGADAH ON? THINK AGAIN!
Check out this wonderful essay by our colleague in the CJH reading room on just a few of the Haggadah’s that you might find out there.
And HAPPY PASSOVER!
Thanks 16thstreet!
Die Haggadah des Kindes. (Click on title to view digitized version.) Leo Baeck Institute.
Dayenu: A few Passover Haggadot would have been enough…really?by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian - Collections, Center for Jewish History
As we prepare for the ritual Seder this evening, I started to reflect on the variations of Passover Haggadot and the vast number of them that we have in the collections at the Center for Jewish History. Each of the five partners of the Center has the liturgy in many variations.
The Haggadah is “probably the most widely used text of the Jewish people” according to the Encyclopedia of Judaism (p.1052), which states that “with the exception of some popular folk songs and some local elaborations of the established text, inserted at the end, [the text] remained almost intact from geonic times until the nineteenth century” (p.1053).
In fact, when looking at the Soncino English translation of the Talmud that we have in the reference collection, the Mishnayos listed in the last chapter of Pesachim contain the highlights of the ritual. Cecil Roth’s Jewish Art has extensive passages on Illuminated Haggadot with regard to the illumination of Hebrew manuscripts in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance section. It explains that the Haggadah was popular for illustration because it is a relatively small but widely popular work. One edition mentioned is The Sarajevo Haggadah.
The American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Yeshiva University Museum have copies of a facsimile of the Sarajevo Haggadah. The AJHS copy, The Sarajevo Haggadah, also contains text by Cecil Roth: “The Sarajevo Haggadah and its significance in the history of art.” The Yeshiva University Museum holds other illustrated Haggadot including Pages from Haggadah created by Eliezer Zusman Magrytsh, 1831-1832, Call number 1974.001. Select pages of this work are available online; click here.
The following are more selections from each partner of the Center. Click on the listed item to view its bibliographic record or, when available, the digitized version that is available online.
Yeshiva University Museum
Chagall’s Passover Haggadah, 1987
The Moss Haggadah: a complete reproduction of the Haggadah written and illuminated by David Moss for Richard and Beatrice Levy, with the commentary of the artist, 1990
Haggadah and woodcut: an introduction to the Passover Haggadah completed by Gershom Cohen in Prague, Sunday, 26 Teveth, 5287 (Dec. 30, 1526) by Charles Wengrov, 1967
Yeshiva University Museum holds many ritual items, such as a silver and enamel Seder plate created by the artist Albert Dov Sigal.
Leo Baeck Institute
The Offenbacher Haggadah, illustrated by Fritz Kredel, has been digitized and is available online.
Another work—which is in Hebrew and includes a German translation—is also available online: Hagadah le-Yeladim=Die Haggadah des Kindes
The LBI has numerous other works in their repository spanning a large period of time, including Seder Hagadah shel Pesah: im perush yafeh ṿe-tsiyurim naim, Amsterdam, 1711 or 1712.
I also found an 1846 Prague work entitled Seder Marbeh le-saper ṿe-hu Hagadah shel Pesah. It has heavily stained pages, “possibly by food.”
There are also many other Passover-related works held by LBI, some of them Haggadot and others books on the liturgy, such as Haggadah and history: a panorama in facsimile of five centuries of the printed Haggadah from the collections of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, 1975.
LBI also holds the 1955 selection, Which is the oldest woodcut Haggadah?
American Sephardi Federation
The American Sephardi Federation has many relevant works, including: A Sephardic Passover Haggadah: with translation and commentary prepared by Marc D. Angel, 1988
Seder Hagadah shel Pesah: The Amsterdam Haggadah of 1662 is a reprint of an illustrated Haggadah published in Amsterdam in 1662 with a commentary by Rabbi Joseph of Padua. This work has instructions in three languages on how to conduct the Seder; the Judeo-Italian instructions are in the right-hand column, the Yiddish in the center, and the Ladino on the left-hand side.
There is also a digital recording available online: Saady’s recordings of Haggadah and others, date unknown, recorded in Hebrew and/or Ladino.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
There are over 500 results in the YIVO library catalog for “Haggadah.”
One is the Sefer Zevah Pesah, 1557. The book includes text of the Haggadah, and it was part of the Strashun Library Collection in Vilna (today Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania). The Library was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 and shipped to Frankfurt in Germany to be part of the future Institute for the Research of the Extinct Jewish People, planned by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s chief Nazi ideologue and Head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The Strashun Collection, along with the YIVO Vilna collections, were liberated by the American Army, and re-patriated to YIVO in New York in April 1947. The work has been digitized, and it is available online; click here to view.
Seder Hagadah shel Pesah bi-leshon ha-kodesh u-fitrono bi-leshon Italyano is from Rome, 1609, with text in Judeo-Italian & Hebrew, and now on microfiche.
Seder Hagadah shel Pesaḥ im perush Abarabanel from Fürth, 1755. This book was also part of the Strashun Library and has been digitized; click here to view.
The more contemporary YIVO holdings reflect many changes in the face of modernity. These include:
Let my people stay!: Hagode for an immigrant justice seder. Los Angeles : Workmen’s Circle / Arbeter Ring, 2007.
The women’s Passover companion: women’s reflections on the festival of freedom, 2003
The freedom seder: a new Haggadah for Passover by Arthur I. Waskow, 1970. This is “an updated, radicalized version of the traditional seder text.” (This is also held by the American Jewish Historical Society.)
American Jewish Historical Society
AJHS holds the Arthur I. Waskow papers, P-152. The finding aid contains details on the collection, including how there is a folder on “Seders inspired by Waskow’s work.” Perhaps the annual Passover Seder held by President Obama should be mentioned. (For more on “the Obama Seder,” click here.)
AJHS also has an array of Haggadot encompassing both modern and traditional varieties. There are over 500 keyword matches when you search the catalog. Works that I found interesting include:
The “First American edition.” Service for the two first nights of the Passover: in Hebrew and English / According to the German & Spanish Jews. Translated into English by the late David Levi, of London, 1836.
The revised Hagada with musical notes, 1898.
Hagadah, the narrative of Israel’s redemption from Egypt: Seder ritual for Passover-eve, 1933.
The new American Haggadah Reconstructionist, 1999.
The Chassidic Haggadah: An anthology of commentary and stories for the seder, 1988.
Hagadah shel Pesah: Seder for Soviet Jewry, 1968.
Haggadah for Jews and Buddhists, 2006.
This represents just a small selection of the Haggadot that can be found in the partners’ collections here at the Center. I encourage you to explore these works and conduct your own searches of the collections (by clicking here). The Haggadot and Passover-related works housed here at the Center will prove varied and thought-provoking resources for your own Passover celebrations and reflections.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m27v1d5JVJ1r3qmd1o1_r2_500.jpg)
THINK YOU GOT YOUR HAGGADAH ON? THINK AGAIN!
Check out this wonderful essay by our colleague in the CJH reading room on just a few of the Haggadah’s that you might find out there.
And HAPPY PASSOVER!
Die Haggadah des Kindes. (Click on title to view digitized version.) Leo Baeck Institute.
Dayenu: A few Passover Haggadot would have been enough…really?
by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian - Collections, Center for Jewish HistoryAs we prepare for the ritual Seder this evening, I started to reflect on the variations of Passover Haggadot and the vast number of them that we have in the collections at the Center for Jewish History. Each of the five partners of the Center has the liturgy in many variations.
The Haggadah is “probably the most widely used text of the Jewish people” according to the Encyclopedia of Judaism (p.1052), which states that “with the exception of some popular folk songs and some local elaborations of the established text, inserted at the end, [the text] remained almost intact from geonic times until the nineteenth century” (p.1053).
In fact, when looking at the Soncino English translation of the Talmud that we have in the reference collection, the Mishnayos listed in the last chapter of Pesachim contain the highlights of the ritual. Cecil Roth’s Jewish Art has extensive passages on Illuminated Haggadot with regard to the illumination of Hebrew manuscripts in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance section. It explains that the Haggadah was popular for illustration because it is a relatively small but widely popular work. One edition mentioned is The Sarajevo Haggadah.
The American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Yeshiva University Museum have copies of a facsimile of the Sarajevo Haggadah. The AJHS copy, The Sarajevo Haggadah, also contains text by Cecil Roth: “The Sarajevo Haggadah and its significance in the history of art.” The Yeshiva University Museum holds other illustrated Haggadot including Pages from Haggadah created by Eliezer Zusman Magrytsh, 1831-1832, Call number 1974.001. Select pages of this work are available online; click here.
The following are more selections from each partner of the Center. Click on the listed item to view its bibliographic record or, when available, the digitized version that is available online.
Yeshiva University Museum
Chagall’s Passover Haggadah, 1987
The Moss Haggadah: a complete reproduction of the Haggadah written and illuminated by David Moss for Richard and Beatrice Levy, with the commentary of the artist, 1990
Haggadah and woodcut: an introduction to the Passover Haggadah completed by Gershom Cohen in Prague, Sunday, 26 Teveth, 5287 (Dec. 30, 1526) by Charles Wengrov, 1967
Yeshiva University Museum holds many ritual items, such as a silver and enamel Seder plate created by the artist Albert Dov Sigal.
Leo Baeck Institute
The Offenbacher Haggadah, illustrated by Fritz Kredel, has been digitized and is available online.
Another work—which is in Hebrew and includes a German translation—is also available online: Hagadah le-Yeladim=Die Haggadah des Kindes
The LBI has numerous other works in their repository spanning a large period of time, including Seder Hagadah shel Pesah: im perush yafeh ṿe-tsiyurim naim, Amsterdam, 1711 or 1712.
I also found an 1846 Prague work entitled Seder Marbeh le-saper ṿe-hu Hagadah shel Pesah. It has heavily stained pages, “possibly by food.”
There are also many other Passover-related works held by LBI, some of them Haggadot and others books on the liturgy, such as Haggadah and history: a panorama in facsimile of five centuries of the printed Haggadah from the collections of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, 1975.
LBI also holds the 1955 selection, Which is the oldest woodcut Haggadah?
American Sephardi Federation
The American Sephardi Federation has many relevant works, including: A Sephardic Passover Haggadah: with translation and commentary prepared by Marc D. Angel, 1988
Seder Hagadah shel Pesah: The Amsterdam Haggadah of 1662 is a reprint of an illustrated Haggadah published in Amsterdam in 1662 with a commentary by Rabbi Joseph of Padua. This work has instructions in three languages on how to conduct the Seder; the Judeo-Italian instructions are in the right-hand column, the Yiddish in the center, and the Ladino on the left-hand side.
There is also a digital recording available online: Saady’s recordings of Haggadah and others, date unknown, recorded in Hebrew and/or Ladino.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
There are over 500 results in the YIVO library catalog for “Haggadah.”
One is the Sefer Zevah Pesah, 1557. The book includes text of the Haggadah, and it was part of the Strashun Library Collection in Vilna (today Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania). The Library was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 and shipped to Frankfurt in Germany to be part of the future Institute for the Research of the Extinct Jewish People, planned by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s chief Nazi ideologue and Head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. The Strashun Collection, along with the YIVO Vilna collections, were liberated by the American Army, and re-patriated to YIVO in New York in April 1947. The work has been digitized, and it is available online; click here to view.
Seder Hagadah shel Pesah bi-leshon ha-kodesh u-fitrono bi-leshon Italyano is from Rome, 1609, with text in Judeo-Italian & Hebrew, and now on microfiche.
Seder Hagadah shel Pesaḥ im perush Abarabanel from Fürth, 1755. This book was also part of the Strashun Library and has been digitized; click here to view.
The more contemporary YIVO holdings reflect many changes in the face of modernity. These include:
Let my people stay!: Hagode for an immigrant justice seder. Los Angeles : Workmen’s Circle / Arbeter Ring, 2007.
The women’s Passover companion: women’s reflections on the festival of freedom, 2003
The freedom seder: a new Haggadah for Passover by Arthur I. Waskow, 1970. This is “an updated, radicalized version of the traditional seder text.” (This is also held by the American Jewish Historical Society.)
American Jewish Historical Society
AJHS holds the Arthur I. Waskow papers, P-152. The finding aid contains details on the collection, including how there is a folder on “Seders inspired by Waskow’s work.” Perhaps the annual Passover Seder held by President Obama should be mentioned. (For more on “the Obama Seder,” click here.)
AJHS also has an array of Haggadot encompassing both modern and traditional varieties. There are over 500 keyword matches when you search the catalog. Works that I found interesting include:
The “First American edition.” Service for the two first nights of the Passover: in Hebrew and English / According to the German & Spanish Jews. Translated into English by the late David Levi, of London, 1836.
The revised Hagada with musical notes, 1898.
Hagadah, the narrative of Israel’s redemption from Egypt: Seder ritual for Passover-eve, 1933.
The new American Haggadah Reconstructionist, 1999.
The Chassidic Haggadah: An anthology of commentary and stories for the seder, 1988.
Hagadah shel Pesah: Seder for Soviet Jewry, 1968.
Haggadah for Jews and Buddhists, 2006.
This represents just a small selection of the Haggadot that can be found in the partners’ collections here at the Center. I encourage you to explore these works and conduct your own searches of the collections (by clicking here). The Haggadot and Passover-related works housed here at the Center will prove varied and thought-provoking resources for your own Passover celebrations and reflections.
WHAT SUSTAINS YOU AS MIRIAM SUSTAINED THE ISRAELITES EN ROUTE TO THE PROMISED LAND?
This tulip-shaped cup commemorates Miriam, Moses’ sister. Miriam’s well was the source of water in the desert, after the Exodus from Egypt, which sustained the Israelites during their forty-year trek to the Promised Land. Miriam’s Cups such as this are recent additions to the Passover seder and highlight the contribution of women to Jewish culture.
RKADH Tobi Kahn New York, 1998 Bronze cast, glass Gift of Victoria E. Schonfeld. Collection of YU Museum (2000.683).
OPEN THAT DOOR AND SET A PLACE! ELIJAH IS COMING!
Pesach starts tomorrow night! Get out the Matzah! Pop those corks! Get ready for some sacramental reenactment!
The decoration of this chair includes interchangeable plaques that identify its many purposes, one of which is a chair for Elijah at the Seder table.
Ceremonial chair. Catriel Sugarman. Wood, mother-of-pearl. Gift of Belle Rosenbaum in honor of Sylvia A. Herskowitz. Collection of YU Museum (2006.236).
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