Sulzbach, a town in southern Germany, never had a large Jewish community, but it was widely known in the Jewish world for the many Hebrew and Judeo-German books which were printed there.*
The establishment of Hebrew printing presses in Sulzbach in the second part of the seventeenth century was due in a great measure to the liberal Duke Christian August, who was personally interested in Jewish studies.
The first Jewish-owned print shop in the town was opened in 1669 by Isaak Kohen of Prague. He remained in Sulzbach for a short period only, moving from there to Wilhermsdorf, where he was active as a printer for about twenty years.
In 1684 Moses ben Uri Shraga Bloch was given permission to open a Hebrew printing press. After his death, about 1693, the print shop was continued by his sons. In 1699 it was taken over by Aaron Fraenkel, who had settled in Sulzbach in 1673 and had married Bloch’s daughter Bula. Fraenkel, who was a son of Rabbi Uri Lippman of Vienna and had lived in that city until the expulsion of the Jews in 1669-1670, headed the printing press for twenty years. He was succeeded by his son Meshullam Zalman, who was in charge for more than four decades. This was the most flourishing period of the print shop, whose books were sold all over Europe. The printing of the Talmud brought Meshullam Zalman into a dispute with competitors in Amsterdam; Europe’s leading rabbis of the time became involved in the controversy. The print shop existed until 1851, remaining to the end in the possession of Bloch’s descendants.
In the years 1839-1846 another Hebrew printer, H. Frank, was also active in Sulzbach. More than thirty edition of the Haggadah were printed in that town. Almost all of them were produced by the presses of Bloch’s successors.
The Haggadah which is reproduced here was printed in 1755 by Meshullam Zalman. Like many other Haggadoth of the period it shows the influence of the illustrated Haggadah, printed in Amsterdam in 1695. It features an abridged version of Don Isaac Abravanel’s commentary and the short esoteric commentary ״Perush Al Pi HaSod״ as well as the Judeo-German versions of the hymns ״Adir Hu,״ ״Ehad Mi Yode’a״ and ״Had Gadya,״ all of which appear in the famous Amsterdam Haggadah. The woodcuts of the Sulzbach Haggadah are imitations of the copperplate illustrations of the Amsterdam Haggadah and bear the captions.
The two Haggadoth differ in the illustration of their title pages, but both show the figures of Moses and Aaron, who appear frequently on title pages of Hebrew books of the period.
The Sulzbach Haggadah, 1755, is another Haggadah of major cultural interest, published by the Diskin Orphan Home as a token of gratitude to its friends and supporters. This Haggadah is very rare. Many thanks to Mr. Stephen P. Durchslag, Attorney at Law, Chicago, IL, who was kind enough to place his copy at the disposal of Rabbi Munish Weintraub, director of the institution, who invested great efforts to have it reproduced.
T. Preschel, 1985* About the Jewish community of Sulzbach see: M. Weinberg, Geschichte der Juden in der Oberpfalz; V. Herzogtum Sulzvach (1927); B.Z. Ophir/ F. Wiesemann, Die Juedischen Gemeinden in Bayern 1918-1945 (1979). The Jewish print shops of Sulzbach and their activities were described by M. Weinberg in the Frankfurt Jahrbuch der Juedisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 15 (1923), vol. 17 (1926), vol. 21 (1930).