Siddur According to the Rite of Corfu with Poems for Weddings, Circumcisions, and Other Occasions, Scribe: Meir ben Isaac Rothenburg, [Corfu], 1706

Fols. 1r-32v: Prayers and piyyutim for the wedding.

Fols. 33r-37v: Piyyutim for circumcision.

Fols. 38r-183r: Prayers and piyyutim for Shabbat and holidays.

Fols. 183v-184v: Poems by Eliezer di Mordo. Eliezer Mordo was a prominent leader, rabbi and physician of the Corfu Jewish community. In fact, there were two people with this name and both were rabbis and doctors. The portrait of the elder one is in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Members of the Mordo family aided the Venetian forces in defending Corfu against the Ottoman invaders in 1716. See also Montefiore ms. 220.

According to the colophon on fol. 29v, this fine Siddur was written by Meir ben Isaac Rothenburg in 1706. It is unusual to find that a scribe with a German surname wrote this typical Corfu manuscript. Several interesting illustrations appear in this manuscript. On fol. 9v is an illustration of a cup next to the Grace After Meals and on fol. 13v are two more cups; one stands alongside the blessing on wine, the other is overturned next to the bracha achrona (the blessing said following consumption). On fol. 123v is a sketch of a shekel, next to the service for the Sabbath of Parshat Shekalim, and on fol. 182r is a diagram of kabbalistic spheres alongside a composition based on the ten spheres. On the back flyleaf is a collation of the manuscript, signed M. G. [Moses Gaster] and on the margins are penciled identification of poets in Halberstam’s hand.

Sotheby’s is grateful to Menahem Schmelzer z”l and Benjamin Richler for cataloguing this manuscript.

Provenance

Tedesco (Ashkenazi) family (various entries on the inside front and back cover and front flyleaf relating to the family from the years 1804-1841) — Mordecai Vitta (=Hayyim) ben Elijah di Mordo Barba Negra — Levi Rosenthal, 1720 (owner's inscription, fol. 185v) — Solomon Halberstam (shelf no. 354)

Physical Description

[1] 185 = 186 leaves on paper, 7 x 4 ¾ inches; 178 x 121 mm, written in square and cursive script in black ink, poem on fol. 53v in a different hand, decorated title-page, sketches of cups (fols. 9v, 13v), figure of a shekel coin (fol. 123v), diagram of kabbalistic spheres (fol. 182r), catchwords; title-page and fols. 4, 49, and 52 detached, some light scattered foxing and browning, a few wine stains in the first quire. Contemporary Italian calf, spine gilt; worn, short tears to boards, spine ends chewed with some losses, endpapers heavily annotated.

Literature

Hirschfeld (ms. no. 236); L. J. Weinberger, Rabbanite and Karaite Liturgy in South-Eastern Europe, (1991), and Jewish Hymnography, (1998), pp., 330-331; Cecil Roth, (Venice, 1930), p. 323