Livre Hagadah

Objet musée

---

Numéro d'inventaire : 14645
Titre : Livre Hagadah
Dénomination contrôlée : Livre Hagadah
Désignation de l'objet : Haggadah Seder shel Pessah, par Mechoulam Zalman fils d' Aaron, Sulzbach, 1753. Communauté de Sulzbach. Commentaire de Isaac Abravanel.
Dimensions : 32,0 cm x 20,0 cm
Mode d'acquisition : don
Source de l'acquisition :
Personnes/Organisations liées : Mechoulam Zalman Aaron; Mechoulam Zalman Aaron, imprimeur; Abravanel, Isaac
Datation (période) : XVIIIe siècle
Date de production : 1753
Provenance géographique : Allemagne, Sulzbach
Provenance géographique :
Informations historiques : The Hebrew presses of Germany consisted of two groups: those with the Prague connection, such as Sulzbach, Wilhermsdorf, and Fuerth; and those originating with the Ashkenazi printers of Amsterdam, such as Dyhernfurth, Dessau, Halle. In Sulzbach (Bavaria) an interesting and successful experiment in Christian and Jewish cooperation in the production of Hebrew books began in 1667, when Abraham Lichtenthaler, a Lutheran, set up a Hebrew press. He was assisted by Isaac b. Judah Loeb Yuedels, a Prague-trained printer, who had a license but no capital, and who was soon after in Wilhermsdorf. The patron of the project was Duke Christian August, an enthusiast of theosophy. Most early Sulzbach title pages have no decorations; only later did there appear simple border lines or illustrations engraved or on woodblocks. Some show a serpent winding round a tree (the Tree of Knowledge); others show crabs and fishes, or Moses and David on the right and Aaron and Solomon on the left. Some of these title pages were used in Fuerth and Dyhernfurth as well. The type was at first that of Prague, but for certain works the type of Amsterdam was used. Moses Bloch was succeeded by his widow and sons (1694–99) who printed some tractates as part of a plan to print the entire Talmud. Then Bloch's son-in-law Aaron Frankl took over, his first production being a two-volume folio maḥzor, attractively printed with decorated initials and a convenient arrangement of the prayers. Aaron was followed by his son Meshullam Zalman (1721–64), who printed a Talmud edition, 1755–63. His competitor, Proops of Amsterdam, obtained from the rabbinical assembly at the Four Council meeting at Staro-Konstantinov (1755) an injunction, which was countermanded by the decision of a ten-member rabbinical court presided over by the rabbi of Fuerth, David Stanss. A similar controversy arose in the next century over the Talmud editions of Vilna and Slavuta. Meshullam Zalman's sons and grandsons continued the business into the middle of the 19th century, when it was carried on under the name of S. Arnstein and Sons (1818–51); their publisher's catalogs appeared from 1830. The firm founded by Moses Bloch had been active for 160 years, issuing about 600 works, among them many cheaply printed but popular liturgical items. Another center of Hebrew printing in Bavaria was Wilhermsdorf, where Isaac b. Judah Loeb Yuedels (see before under Sulzbach) set up a press in 1669 with staff recruited from Prague, among them his daughters as setters and a son-in-law as proofreader. Another Prague printer, Israel Meir, set up a press in 1712 but sold it the same year to Hirsch b. Ḥayyim of Fuerth, whose son worked later in Fuerth, printing until 1739. Hirsch cultivated book decorations: his printer's mark was the tree with the serpent and a crab and a lion on each side; the title page showed Moses and Aaron and angels hovering above them and the last page a flower basket as vignette. Nearby Fuerth, a center of talmudic learning, had its first Hebrew presses by 1691. One was established by Solomon Shne'ur and his son Joseph with the help of the Cracow printer Moses Menahem Katz, and later continued under another son (Abraham) and a son-in-law Isaac Bing, and their sons or successors to 1730. This press printed some important rabbinic and Yiddish works. The other enterprise was that of Hirsch Frankfurter (till 1701), who had the backing of his brother-in-law, the Court Jew Mordecai Model of Ansbach; the latter had a license to print the Talmud. Another press was founded in Fuerth in 1737 by Ḥayyim b. Ẓevi Hirsch, son of the Dyhernfurth printer (see above), and it continued under him and his widow until 1774.