Mahzor (Festival Prayer Book) for Rosh Hashanah According to the Rite of Avignon, Scribe: Immanuel bar Gad de Milhaud, [Provence]: 1690

Mahzor (Festival Prayer Book) for Rosh Hashanah According to the Rite of Avignon, Scribe: Immanuel bar Gad de Milhaud, [Provence]: 1690

Jews have been present in the Avignon region since the Talmudic period, though a community per se is first attested from the twelfth century. Culturally, linguistically, and religiously, Avignonese Jewry was straightforwardly Provencal, but because the city was sold to the pope in 1348, it was politically distinct. As a result, together with another papal territory, the immediately adjacent Comtat Venaissin, Avignon served as a safe haven for Jews when they were expelled from the rest of Provence in 1498-1501. From that point, Avignon and three Comtat locales—Cavaillon, Carpentras, and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue—became the last bastions of authentic Provencal minhag (usage).

For all their similarities, though, there were some important differences between the liturgical rites of Avignon and the other communities, mainly in connection with the piyyutim (liturgical poetry) each recited, which necessitated that they use separate prayer books. The first attempt to publish the minhag of Carpentras was undertaken in Amsterdam between 1739 and 1763; this was followed by a series of Avignon-rite prayer books issued between 1763 and 1767 in Amsterdam and Avignon, including a mahzor for Rosh Hashanah (Amsterdam, 1765).

The present lot, a small folio-sized mahzor for Rosh Hashanah according to the rite of Avignon, was masterfully copied by Immanuel bar Gad de Milhaud in 1690. De Milhaud, active for over half a century between 1662 and 1715, was one of the most prolific Provencal scribes ever, and his oeuvre of beautifully executed liturgies has survived in dozens of exemplars located in libraries in the United States, Israel, England, France, Switzerland, Russia, and Italy. His son, Gad, subsequently continued the father’s craft into the mid-eighteenth century. The present volume survives as a monument of pre-print Provencal Jewish civilization.

Provenance

Hayyim (Immanuel) Ravel ben David Ravel, 1715 (front pastedown, f. [1r])

David Ravel ben Hayyim Immanuel (Ravel), 1715 (ff. [1r], 92r)

Aron Vives [Hayyim] Ravel ben David Ravel, Avignon, 6 September 1730 (f. 92r)

Jahuda Salon [Shalom] Ravel, Avignon (f. 92v, loose rear leaf)

Physical Description

92 folios (11 1/8 x 8 in.; 282 x 204 mm) (collation: i10, ii14, iii-iv10, v14, vi10, vii14, viii10) on paper (ff. 6v, 7v, 51v, 57r-v blank); modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corner of rectos; signatures in gutter at head of recto of first (or thereabouts) folio of each quire (sometimes shaved); written in elegant Provencal square (text body) and semi-cursive (rubrics, refrains, headers, and catchwords) scripts in brown ink; generally single-column text of twenty-seven lines per page; ruled in blind; justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters and insertion of space fillers; biblical and liturgical texts vocalized (though without the use of kamats); Tetragrammaton formed as three yodin in a triangle followed by an apostrophe; later (decorated) headers throughout; horizontal catchwords at foot of versos; intermittent corrections and insertions in primary and secondary hands; pen trials and arithmetic on front and rear pastedowns, f. 92r-v, and rear flyleaf. Title within simple architectural frame; enlarged incipits; some letters charmingly flourished; stichographic layout of the Song of the Sea on ff. 21r, 60v-61r; many piyyutim laid out ornamentally; illustrations of the lengths of the shofar blasts on ff. 42v, 81v. Scattered staining; dampstaining spreading out from gutter at head throughout; minor dog-earing; some quires disconnected from binding; small repair to lower-outer corner of f. [1]; f. 11 remargined and stabilized; nicks in outer edges of f. 22, lower edges of ff. 23, 27, 33, 83, and upper edge of f. 58; tape repair in outer edge of f. 34; tear in outer edge of f. 56; ff. 81-82 loose at foot; f. 83 strengthened along gutter. Original(?) brown leather, bumped, scratched, worn, and wormed; heavily worn spine in six compartments with raised bands; gilt designs in each compartment; headband exposed; original(?) paper rear flyleaf (loose) and pastedowns.

Literature

Cecil Roth, “The Liturgies of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin,” Journal of Jewish Bibliography 1,4 (July 1939): 99-105.

Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 550.

Zosa Szajkowski, “Yehudim be-arba ha-kehillot shel ha-proventsiyah ha-appifyorit bi-derom tsarefat: bibliyyogerafyah shel sefarim, hoverot u-mismakhim mudpasim me-ha-me’ah ha-17 ad tehillat ha-me’ah ha-19,” Kiryat sefer 32,2-3 (1957): 205-210, 349-356, at p. 210 (no. 62).

https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH001993056/NLI?volumeItem=2