The Offenbach Haggadah, 1722

The Haggadah, which is reproduced here, was printed in Offenbach, Germany, in 1722. It is largely the product of one family: Grandfather, father and son.

The commentaries and discussions of the laws of Passover featured in this Haggadah were composed by Rabbi Yehuda Leib, who was rabbi of Horodec, district of Grodno, White Russia, and by his son, Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf, who was Rosh Yeshiva and a member of the rabbinic court of Pinsk.

The Haggadah was published by three partners. One, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, a member of the rabbinic court of the Mainz region, was a son of Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf.

Another partner was Yisrael ben Moshe Halle, a Hebrew printer. Around 1718, Yisrael joined a non-Jewish Offenbach print shop, which from that time on printed also Hebrew books.[1]

The Offenbach Haggadah, 1722, was printed by Yisrael ben Moshe. It is decorated with thirteen pictures, almost all of which are imitations of the copper plate illustrations of the Haggadah printed in Amsterdam in 1695. The Amsterdam Haggadah illustrations were famous throughout the Jewish world and were widely copied by printers and manuscript artists.

The illustrations were printed from woodcuts. In the order of their appearance in the Haggadah, the pictures represent the following: The Seder of the Sages at Bnei Brak, the Four Sons, Abraham destroying the idols of this father, the three angels visiting Abraham, Moses slaying the Egyptian, Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses in the Nile, Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, the plague of the frogs and the Egyptians drowning in the sea. The following two illustrations duplicate the pictures showing Moses slaying the Egyptian and the Seder of the Sages in Bnei Brak, respectively. According to their captions they should represent the Exodus and the Passover meal in Egypt. The two final pictures are: David at prayer and the Temple in Jerusalem.

The captions of the illustrations are the same as in the Amsterdam Haggadah.

The woodcuts are not original with this Haggadah. They appeared already in a Haggadah printed in the same print shop a year earlier.

Like contemporary Ashkenazi Haggadoth, this Haggadah contains the instructions for the Seder in Hebrew and in Judeo-German as well as the Judeo-German versions of the songs ״Adir Hu״, ״Ehad Mi Yode’a״ and ״Had Gadya.״

In 1722, when this Haggadah was printed, Offenbach had only a small community with a small synagogue. Several years later, in 1728-1729, the Jews of Offenbach with the support of Jews from other towns built a large synagogue which served the community for almost two hundred years. A new synagogue was dedicated during World War I, when there were about 2000 Jews in Offenbach. The community was destroyed during the Hitler era. After World War II a new community was established there.[2]

This facsimile edition of the Offenbach Haggadah, 1722,[3] has been produced by the Diskin Orphan Home of Israel to grace the Seder table of its friends and supporters. We are indebted to Rabbi Munish Weintraub, its director, for his great efforts to have this beautiful Haggadah reproduced.