Welcome to Episode 4 of “Jewish Heritage locked down edition”
We’ve been posting links to virtual tours and other cool online explorations of Jewish museums, synagogues, and other Jewish heritage sites.
With Passover starting next week — this episode focuses on links specifically related to the holiday. Mainly illuminated Medieval Haggadot — but also more!
Click for our earlier, more general, Episodes:
EPISODE 1 — linked to virtual tours of some of Italy’s gorgeous Jewish heritage sites — including synagogues, Jewish museums, Jewish cemeteries.
EPISODE 2 — linked to resources in 5 countries — Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Ukraine — and also to the wonderful Synagogues360 web site.
EPISODE 3 — linked to a variety of resources in Germany, Israel, Poland, Romania, Spain, UK, USA
So stay home — but explore!
(And don’t forget to like our Facebook page — or join our Facebook group to discuss what’s going on where you are.)
VIRTUALLY PESACH
Click here to take a virtual tour of an exhibition on medieval Haggadot in Catalonia
The exhibition, BARCELONA HAGGADOT. The Jewish Splendour of Catalan Gothic Period was mounted at the Museum of the History of Barcelona in 2015.
In the 14th century, Barcelona’s workshops constituted a highly active centre for the production of Haggadot, which were commissioned by families living in the Call (Jewish quarter) in Barcelona and in other Jewish communities. Jews and Christians alike worked on Haggadot and shared the same style and iconographic models.
The exhibition Barcelona Haggadot gathered for the first time in more than six centuries a selection of these beautiful works of the Catalan Gothic period that were dispersed around the world when the Jews were expelled. The included the Rylands Haggadah, currently at the University of Manchester; the Graziano Haggadah from the Jewish Theological Center in New York; the Mocatta Haggadah, from the University College London, the Bologna-Modena Haggadah from the University of Bologna & Biblioteca Estense, Modena; the Cambridge Catalan Haggadah from Cambridge University, the Kaufmann Haggadah from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; and the Poblet Haggadah from the Poblet Monastery in Catalonia.
Read an article about the exhibition HERE
Follow the Seder — page by page — in a medieval Haggadah from the exhibition!
For context, click here for an illustrated and animated video history of the medieval Jewish quarter of Barcelona
Watch an illustrated lecture about the history of the so-called Washington Haggadah, which was written in Germany in 1478.
The Haggadah (now preserved in the Library of Congress in Washington DC) was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2011, and this lecture accompanied the exhibition, called “The Washington Haggadah Medieval Jewish Art in Context.”
Learn more about the art and contexts of the Washington Haggadah, and particularly about the illustrations, in this lecture: Joel ben Simeon Illustrating the Washington Haggadah:
This lecture also accompanied the Met exhibition in 2011.
The Sarajevo Haggadah and its remarkable history, from medieval Spain to the Balkans — including the story of its dramatic survival in World War II and the Bosnian War of the 1990s
Created and painted by hand on the finest leather in Spain in the 1300s, the Haggadah was discovered in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1894. How it got there, no one knows, but an Italian church censor decided not to burn it in 1609 when he scribbled in its margin, and in 1942, a Nazi general went looking for it while a Muslim scholar was hiding it. Then, when Sarajevo was besieged in 1992, the great book vanished – all while a band of Holocaust survivors turned their synagogue into a humanitarian aid agency. Their city was cut off from the world, and by the time the siege ended nearly four years later, 11,000 men, women and children had been shot down by snipers or blown up by mortars.
Watch a video by Edward Serotta about his search for the Haggadah during the Bosnian war:
Click here to read a lengthy article about the Sarajevo Haggadah
Click here to visit a Yad Vashem online exhibition: “And You Shall Tell Your Children” — Marking the Holiday of Passover Before, During and After the Holocaust
Through the photos, the artifacts and the personal testimonies, the exhibit explores and remember some of the ways Passover was observed throughout Europe prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust years, and in the displaced persons camps and children’s homes following the war.
Click here to explore the National Library of Israel’s exhibition of hand-written Haggadot, with photos, text, and a 360 degree video
The exhibition is a collection of Passover Haggadot written, illuminated and illustrated by hand from the twelfth through the twentieth century.
The National Library of Israel holds Haggadot from Persia and Babylon, Europe and Africa, each telling the stories of Jewish communities distinct in their languages and writing styles, in their philosophies and the wide range of reasons that led their scribes to take up the pen – as they remained faithful to the ancient, familiar and beloved text.
You can watch the introductory video here: