Created seven centuries ago, the magnificent Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor is a scribal masterpiece that attests to the vibrancy of the medieval Jewish community. Written in a distinctive and elegant Hebrew script, this rare prayerbook contains the liturgy for the two holiest festivals on the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
This manuscript was copied and decorated in Southern Germany in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century by a scribe named Abraham. His calligraphic dexterity and artistic creativity are evident in the book’s layout, script, and imaginative illustrations of Gothic architecture, fantastical beasts, and medieval Jews engaged in prayer.
Hebrew prayerbooks known as mahzorim (sing., mahzor) contain the cycle of prayers for the entire Jewish liturgical year. In the Middle Ages, Jewish communities around the world developed their own unique prayer usages that can be classified by region. The rite of the Jews of Ashkenazic (i.e., German-speaking) lands, in particular, incorporated the tradition of embellishing the prayer services with Hebrew liturgical poems known as piyyutim (sing., piyyut), which were recited on fast days, special Sabbaths, festivals, and other occasions. These poems helped direct the worshipper’s thoughts to the themes of the day on which they were meant to be said and thereby elevated his or her religious experience.
In the High Middle Ages, when book production was costly, Ashkenazic congregations often expended large sums to hire a scribe to copy their particular prayer rite in two large mahzor volumes, one comprising the liturgy for the winter, spring, and summer holidays and fast days (Hanukkah through Tish‘ah be-Av) and the other the liturgy for the fall holidays and fast days (Rosh Hashanah through Simhat Torah). These volumes were usually housed in the private home of a member of the community and carried to the synagogue before the services for which they were needed. There, the congregation’s prayer leader would read aloud or chant from the mahzor while the community listened along silently or joined him in chorus.
We can reconstruct the following stations along the Luzzatto mahzor’s journey: originally produced for a Jewish community in the region of Bavaria in southern Germany, where it was likely copied and decorated; a mixed German-French community, perhaps in Alsace, where it was probably vocalised; Constance, to which it seemingly arrived following the Black Death; and Northern Italy, where it was eventually censored. Each of these places left its mark on the text of the volume, which was adapted and updated to bring it into line with local usages and contemporary customs. [x]
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