HAGGADAH
IN THE
GARAGE
IN MANCHESTER, AN HISTORIC PIECE OF JUDAICA
TURNS UP IN AN UNLIKELY PLACE
Arare illuminated Haggadah believed to have been commissioned to commemorate the birth of a great-grandchild of
the famous shtadlan Shmuel Oppenheimer was discovered last summer in an Osem soup box stored in a garage
in the Manchester suburb of Bury in England. The garage and adjoining house had been inherited from a member
of the Rothschild family who passed away in 2007. When a niece of the deceased decided to sell the property, she contacted a local auction house, Adam Partridge Auctioneers, to send an appraiser to see if the house contained any antiques or other items of value.
Bill Forrest, the appraiser, told the disappointed niece that there was nothing remarkable in the house. He was about to depart when she asked him to take a look in the garage and check out some Hebrew items that were stored in a soup box. “What about these?” she asked.
The cardboard box contained several precious objects, including the Haggadah, which dated back to 1726.
Although Mr. Forrest didn’t read Hebrew, he immediately recognized the worth of the find. On the inside of the hand-painted Haggadah was a penciled inscription reading, “No. 47 Exposition du Alvert Hall.”
This was a reference to a catalog listing at an Anglo-Jewish exhibition that had taken place in 1887 at the Royal Albert Hall in the heart of South Kensington, the building that was the fulfillment of Prince Albert’s vision for the promotion of the arts and sciences.
The idea for the exhibition had come from Sir Isidore Spielmann, an engineer who would eventually become president of the Jewish Historical Society of England, which developed out of it. The exhibit, which showcased numerous portraits of Anglo-Jewish personalities, ancient Jewish coins and illuminated manuscripts, was headed by Francis David Mocatta, a well-known philanthropist and historian who authored the book The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition.
Forrest quickly realized that if the illuminated Haggadah had been on display over a century ago at this very prestigious exhibit, it must be worth a fortune.
An expert from Amsterdam examined the goatskin leaves and determined that it was a rare Viennese Haggadah, written and illustrated by Aaron Wolf ben Benjamin Zeev Schreiber Herlingen of Gewitsch, Moravia.
Aaron Schreiber, as he was known, was active as a scribe and illustrator for more than 35 years (circa 1719-1755). In addition to serving private clients, he held an official position at the Royal Library in Vienna beginning in the 1730s. Proficient in many languages, this talented calligrapher was not only a scribe and illustrator of Haggados but also of Scrolls of Esther, circumcision books and miniature prayer books.
During this period, Vienna served as a mecca for Jewish artists because of its small but very wealthy Jewish community. The reason the community was small was that the only Jews legally permitted to live there were the families of court Jews.
Although the Jews had been expelled from Vienna years earlier, in 1670, the Jewish banker and military supplier for the Holy Roman Empire, Shmuel Oppenheimer (1630-1703), was permitted to establish himself there permanently several years later. Oppenheimer, who was a descendant of the Maharal and the Chavos Yair, enjoyed special treatment by Emperor Leopold I, to whom he advanced considerable sums of money for the Great Turkish War. He was also employed by the emperor for delicate political missions. Shmuel Oppenheimer enabled Prince Eugene to provide medical attendance for the soldiers during that war.
The Haggadah found in the garage in Manchester had the name Mendel. One expert said, “I would call it Divine Providence that it was found.”
Oppenheimer inscribed in it next to the date 1726. That was the year Shmuel Oppenheimer’s great-grandson Mendel was
born, and it is believed that the Haggadah was commissioned for his bris. Mendel was the oldest son of Emanuel Oppenheimer and was named after his grandfather, Menachem Mendel Oppenheimer, son of the famous shtadlan who had
passed away five years earlier in 1721.
It was later learned that the Haggadah was commissioned during the artist’s stay in Pressburg (now Bratislava), Slovakia. It is interesting to note that this Haggadah had been passed down through members of the Rothschild family
ever since Mayer Anschel Rothschild of Frankfurt learned the banking business from Yaakov Wolf Oppenheimer, a
grandson of Shmuel Oppenheimer. According to the auction house, the volume was in the possession of the Rothschilds
for over a century and was smuggled from Belgium to England during World War II. It is possible that it belonged to
a member of the Oppenheimer family who had married a Rothschild as the two families were joined through marriage.
In fact, Adam Partridge Auctioneers determined that it was extremely valuable when it learned that another Haggadah
made by the same artist, one of only a small handful of survivors, had sold at Sotheby’s in New York in December
2012 for quite a tidy sum. The larger version, which numbered 33 leaves and included a map showing the tribulations of the
Exodus, had fetched almost a million dollars, including the buyer’s premium.
Interestingly, just a month before the find in Manchesterwent on the block, an auction house in Boston, Skinner Auctioneers, sold another Aaron Wolf Haggadah for $375,000.
Dated 1735, its inscription read: “This Haggadah belongs to the learned Itsik, son of Abraham Rofe of Lisa [Littau, in
Czech Litovel], who lives in the town of Hultschin.”
The pictorial title of the 42-page Haggadah commissioned for Mendel Oppenheimer depicts Moshe and Aharon, and is
still bound in the original red-dyed vellum over pasteboard. Each of its 20 leaves, measuring 242 mm by 162 mm, has
45 colored vignettes measuring 27 mm by 45 mm, and 11 colored vignettes measuring 77 mm by 120 mm. There are
slight food and wine stains throughout.
Rabbi Tovia Preschel, z”l, the late father of this writer, once described a 1751 version of this Haggadah called the Vienna
Haggadah, which was reprinted by the Diskin Orphan Home in 1978. He noted that the calligrapher had been born in
Posen and that the Haggadah contained instructions in Judeo-German for the observance of the Seder as well as translations of “Adir Hu,” “Echad Mi Yodeia” and “Chad Gadya” as they appear in old Ashkenazic Haggados. All of the large
illustrations, he claimed, except for the first, were modeled on pictures in the famous Amsterdam Haggadah, which were
widely copied by others.
The pictures represent the following scenes in order of their appearance: the Seder of the Sages in Bnei Brak, the
Four Sons, the three angels visiting Avraham, Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moshe in the Nile, the Egyptians drowning
in the sea, and finally, the Temple in Jerusalem. A series of miniatures depicts the Ten Plagues and illustrates the songs
“Echad Mi Yodeia” and “Chad Gadya.” The title page, adorned with the figures of Moshe and Aharon, is also found in the
Amsterdam Haggadah.
Professor Yaakov Wise of the University of Manchester’s Centre for Jewish Studies, an expert on Haggados and other
Jewish manuscripts, was instrumental in making many of the determinations. He described the discovery of the Aaron
Wolf Herlingen Haggadah as “miraculous,” given that over the past 300 years of tumultuous, blood-soaked Jewish history, many items of Judaica were lost or deliberately destroyed in Europe.
“It is very, very lucky that it survived from that period. It is a miracle that it wasn’t thrown out, that it was found and
someone realized what it was. I would call it Divine Providence,” he declared. “It would be very nice if it went to a
Jewish museum, library or university where the public or scholars can go and see it,” he added.
In fact, however, the Haggadah was subsequently purchased by a Viennese collector on November 22, 2013, and
has returned to its native city. It was bought for the sum of
$340,000—not a bad deal for a “garage sale” item.
By Pearl Herzog
181 AMI MAGAZINE // APRIL 9, 2014 // 9 NISSAN 5774