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National Library News
March/April 1999
Vol. 31, no. 3-4
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Savoir Faire
Ashkenaz: A Celebration of German Jewry
by Tom Tytor,
Research and Information Services
The December seminar of the Savoir Faire series featured a slide presentation of pages from various works portraying aspects of the Jewish experience in Europe. The material was based on an exhibition at the National Library of Canada from November 24, 1998 to January 20, 1999. The exhibition drew on the National Library’s Jacob M. Lowy Collection of 4000 volumes of old and rare Hebraica and Judaica. The collection curator, Cheryl Jaffee, presented 21 slides of illustrations from the exhibit, explaining the significance and historical background of each.
Sefer Mesholim. 1926 |
Ashkenaz is the name of a son of Gomer. By the sixth century, Gomer was identified in the Talmud with Germania, a land believed to be in southern Persia. The non-Jewish Germanic tribes of Europe were referred to as the people of Ashkenaz in the 10th century Jewish history, Josippon. Jews of German origin, traditions and culture were referred to as Ashkenazi after their migration into German-speaking lands and into Eastern Europe. There is little documentation of Jewish life in Ashkenaz before the 10th century.
The illustrations, presented in chronological order, encompassed seven centuries of literary accomplishments, from 1272 to 1983. Included among them were:
Tractate Shabat of the
Talmud. 1948 |
- A page from the Worms Mahzor, 1272, depicting the command "Zakhor" (Remember), emblematic of the exhibition. This Mahzor contains the earliest dated Yiddish sentence, and is one of the oldest surviving illuminated Ashkenazi manuscripts. (Ashkenaz is the source of the earliest surviving Jewish illuminated manuscripts.)
- The title page from Tractate Temurah of the Babylonian Talmud, printed in Frankfort an der Oder between 1697 and 1699. It was the first Talmud printed in its entirety in the German-speaking lands.
- A presentation of two pages from the Tishbi, 1541, that contains added glosses in Italian and German transliterated into Hebrew characters. They serve as valuable documentation on the spoken languages of the 16th-century Italian and German Jewish communities. Secular Yiddish literature emerged in 16th-century northern Italy.
- A facsimile of a 1697 edition of Sefer Mesholim, a collection of Yiddish fables that offers glimpses of Ashkenazi customs of the 16th century.
- The Yiddish Bible, 1676-1678, was the first Yiddish translation of the complete Hebrew Bible. It was destined primarily for the Yiddish-speaking communities in Poland.
- The illuminated Passover Haggadah, Altona 1763, is a unique manuscript and one of the most valuable items in the Lowy Collection, exemplifying the 18th-century renaissance of Hebrew manuscript production.
- Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman
, a 1906 publication (first edition) of Martin Buber’s translation of the folklore of the Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Hasidim.
- A tractate from the complete Talmud, published in Germany in 1948 for the first time since the end of World War II. Some 250 years had passed since the complete Talmud was first produced in Germany.
- The concluding slide, from the 1983 Haggadah by contemporary scribe and artist David Moss, is presented as a symbolic metaphor commemorating the beginning and end of the civilization of Ashkenaz. It shows the bird-headed figures of medieval Askenazi manuscript illustration caged behind doors modelled after the gates of Auschwitz.
The next seminar in the Savoir Faire series will take place on April 20. Gilles Gallichan, a librarian at the Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec, will speak on the "Reconstitution des débats, ou comment bâtir une mémoire parlementaire grâce au patrimoine imprimé, 1867-1963".
For more information about the Jacob M. Lowy Collection, visit the Web site at: <www.nlc-bnc.ca/services/elowy.htm>
Copyright. The National Library of Canada.
(Revised: 1999-3-10).