SEDER HANHAGAT BEIT HA-KENESET (CUSTOMS OF THE ASHKENAZIC SYNAGOGUE IN AMSTERDAM), AMSTERDAM: SOLOMON BEN JOSEPH KATZ PROOPS, 1716; TAKKANOT HA-KEHILLAH (REGULATIONS FOR THE ASHKENAZIC COMMUNITY OF AMSTERDAM), AMSTERDAM: ABRAHAM BEN RAPHAEL HEZEKIAH ATHIAS, 1737
Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
SEDER HANHAGAT BEIT HA-KENESET (CUSTOMS OF THE ASHKENAZIC SYNAGOGUE IN AMSTERDAM), AMSTERDAM: SOLOMON BEN JOSEPH KATZ PROOPS, 1716; TAKKANOT HA-KEHILLAH (REGULATIONS FOR THE ASHKENAZIC COMMUNITY OF AMSTERDAM), AMSTERDAM: ABRAHAM BEN RAPHAEL HEZEKIAH ATHIAS, 1737
2 books in 1 volume (7 x 4 1/8 in.; 177 x 105 mm):
Seder hanhagat beit ha-keneset: 8 folios on paper; title within border of printer’s ornaments; decorative elements on ff. [1v], [8r]. Slight soiling in upper-outer corners of ff. 4r-[8v].
Takkanot ha-kehillah: 36 folios on paper; title within border of printer’s ornaments; signature of gabbai tsedakah on f. [1v]; decorative elements on ff. [2r, 3v], [1r], 26v-27v. Slight scattered staining; light browning; minor dogearing.
Both books bound in original gilt-tooled leather, scuffed and worn along edges; joints starting; spine in six compartments with raised bands; gilt edges; contemporary paper flyleaves and pastedowns.
A deluxe collection of historical documents relating to Amsterdam’s Ashkenazic community.
The first Ashkenazim arrived in Amsterdam at the end of the 1610s, joining the Sephardim at first but establishing an independent kehillah in 1639. By 1795, this initially small community had come to number 22,000 residents. In 1671, the Amsterdam Ashkenazim built their first synagogue, which was subsequently supplemented by a number of smaller edifices. The community was administered by a select group of wealthy parnasim who collected taxes, provided relief for the poor, and represented the interests of the kehillah before the non-Jewish authorities.
The present lot comprises two short Yiddish treatises compiled by members of the Ashkenazic leadership. Because they felt that the disorder in the community was “growing each day […] especially in the holy synagogue, where one person says, ‘We do not say this,’ while the other says, ‘We do indeed say this’; similarly, the mourners bicker about saying Kaddish, literally to the point of blows, often resulting in interruption of the service; or one person steals the Kaddish from his fellow” – therefore, the parnasim appointed a committee of three to outline in the vernacular fifty-four practices and customs of the community, calling this pamphlet Seder hanhagat beit ha-keneset.
The second work, Takkanot ha-kehillah, comprises a list of one hundred two regulations governing the administration of the Ashkenazic community and certain aspects of the running of the synagogue. These articles were ratified on Sunday, 28 Adar II [5]497 (March 31, 1737), by twenty-one elders, including Yozela ben Elkanah Segal, perhaps identical with the Yozele Levi whose name is lettered in gilt on the volume’s upper board. The two booklets, printed at different presses in different years, seem nevertheless to have been paired frequently, no doubt due to their similar subject matter and physical dimensions, as testified by Judah A. Joffe in his study of luxury editions in Yiddish.
Provenance
Yozele Levi (lettered in gilt on upper board)
Willy Lindwer Judaica Collectie (ex libris on pastedown of upper board)
L. Borstel (title page of Takkanot ha-kehillah)
Literature
Judah Brillman, Sefer minhagei amsterdam, ve-hu minhagim di-k[ehillah] k[edoshah] ashkenazim amsterdam (Jerusalem: Mekhon Yerushalayim; Amsterdam: Binyan Ariel, 2002).
Mirjam Gutschow, Inventory of Yiddish Publications from the Netherlands[,] c. 1650-c. 1950 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 61 (no. 209), 82 (no. 291).
Judah A. Joffe, “Yidishe prakhtdrukn,” YIVO bleter 16 (1940): 45-58, at pp. 57-58 (no. 18).
Vinograd, Amsterdam 1075, 1478