Historical sources attest to the presence of Jews in Hanover’s Altstadt (old city) in 1292. Suffering during the Black Death persecutions as well as expulsion were the lot of the city’s Jews in the 14th century. Admitted again after some years, the new settlement came to an end in 1588, when the Jews were told to leave. For more than 200 years they remained barred from the old city.
During this period a new community developed in the Neustadt (new city), where Jews had began to settle in the 16th century. For many years the influential Court Jew Leffmann Behrens (1634-1714) headed the community. In the 18th century a number of prominent Torah scholars resided in the Neustadt.
The community grew considerably during the second part of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century as a result of the influx of Jews from smaller localities and immigration from Eastern Europe. In 1852 there were 668 Jews in Hanover. By 1925 their number had increased to more than 5500. It was a well-organized community, boasting a number of fine educational and charitable institutions.
Hanover Jews began to emigrate soon after the Nazis’ rise to power. On October 28, 1938 about 1,000 Jews, who had been Polish nationals, were deported to the Polish border. Among the deportees were the parents of Herschel Grynszpan. During the Kristallnacht pogroms 300 Jews were arrested, the city’s large synagogue was destroyed and Jewish shops were looted.
On the eve of World War II, there were still more than 2,200 Jews in Hanover. In Sept. 1941 the Jews were forced to vacate their apartments and live in cramped quarters in so-called Judenhauser (Jew Houses). In December of that year 1,000 Jews were deported to a place near Riga. One March 1, 1942 about 800 Jews were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. The deportees included Jews from smaller localities, who had moved to Hanover after the outbreak of the war. Deportations continued until the end of February 1945.
The U.S. army occupied Hanover in April 1945. Only a small number of Jews survived in the city. After the end of the war the survivors and returnees from the camps reestablished the Jewish community. The community was later joined by Jewish DPs who settled in the city. In 1963 Hanover’s Jews dedicated a new synagogue.
Prominent rabbis who led the community included Rabbi Aryeh Leib, son of Rabbi Jacob Joshua Falk (author of Penei Yehoshu’a) and Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler. The latter was a native of Hanover. In 1831 he succeeded his father, Rabbi Marcus Baer Adler, as rabbi of Hanover and served the community for 15 years until his appointment as chief rabbi of the Ashkenazi congregations of Great Britain.[1]
Some Hebrew books and booklets were printed in Hanover in the second half of the 18th century and early in the 19th century. In 1827 Salomon Ephraim Blogg, a native of Nijmegen, Holland, who served as teacher in Hanover, prevailed upon the owners of Telgener’s print shop to open a Hebrew department. The department printed a variety of Hebrew books, among them many written, translated or edited by Blogg. He was a prolific scholar. His publications included text books, a history of the Hebrew language, and editions of the Torah, Five Scrolls, Haftarot, Selihot and Tehinot with German translations. He also reedited and translated into German R. Shelomo Zalman London’s popular compendium Kohelet Shelomo as well as R. Shime’on Frankfurter’s often-reprinted Sefer HaHayyim (in preparing the latter Blogg made use of Dr. C. Rehfuss’ edition of the work). Some of Blogg’s books went through several editions.
In 1830 Blogg published a Haggadah with German translation and brief notes in Hebrew and in German. (The German in the Haggadah was printed in Ashkenazic mashait script.) The first pages of the Haggadah – following the publisher’s German introduction – feature, in Hebrew and in German, the laws of searching for and burning the Hametz, practices relating to Erev Pessach, instructions regarding the Eruv Tavshilin and Eruv Hatzerot, as well as directions for the Seder. You find here a prayer to be said during the burning of the Hametz, invocations to be recited in the Mikveh when one cleanses himself ritually in honor of the festival and a short description of the Passover sacrifice in the Temple (to be read on the eve of Pessach, in the afternoon, to substitute for the sacrifice which we are unable to offer).[2]
Blogg, seemingly, copied these features from the Haggadah, contained R. Leon Modena’s abridgment of Abravanel’s commentary, printed by R. Shelomo Zalman London with his Kohelet Shelomo. R.S.Z. London, in turn, apparently, made use of R. Jehiel Michal Epstein’s Kitzur Shelah.
In his introduction, Blogg praises his Haggadah: “Everything is translated.” It contains all one has to know from the night of the search for Hametz until the end of the Seder.
In 1836 Blogg published a “second, enlarged and revised edition” of the Haggadah. The main additions are: The laws for the sale of Hametz (in Hebrew and in German) with a sample of a sale’s contract. These are followed by “a word to the women”. Blogg writes that because the housewives have been entrusted with the cleaning of the home and the koshering of the utensils for Passover, he decided to set forth some of the Passover laws in lucid German. Presented are instructions relating to all stages of the baking of the Matzot as well as directions for making utensils and the oven fit for Passover use (all in German). There is also a chapter, in Hebrew and in German, about the “Four Cups” (the Hebrew part of this chapter was already printed in the first edition in the text, after the drinking of the second cup).
In 1848 and in 1861 were printed the third and fourth editions of this Haggadah, respectively. They do not differ from the second edition.[3]
Blogg died in 1858. He was about eighty years of age. His name does not appear in the 1861 Haggadah, which was printed after his death.
Blogg also published a different Hebrew-German Haggadah.[4]
The Hanover Haggadah, 1861, is an old and interesting Haggadah. It has been reproduced in full (only the additional Passover laws in the German language have been omitted) by the Diskin Orphan Home of Israel, for its patrons and friends in appreciation of their continued help and support.
Rabbi Munish Weintraub, director of the Diskin Orphan Home of Israel, who has published, over the years, a variety of Haggadot to grace the Seder table of the orphan home’s supporters, has devoted great efforts to the preparation of this Haggadah edition.
[1] The account of the history of the Jews of Hanover is based on studies by Otto Dov Kulka, Baruch Z. Ophir and Norbert Prager, published in Leben and Schicksal (Hanover, 1963).
[2] See note 2 in the Hebrew article.
[3] See note 3 in the Hebrew article.
[4] See note 4 in the Hebrew article.