The Haggadah is one of the most treasured and popular Jewish books. This story of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery is read each year around the table at the Passover Seder. Haggadah, which literally means `narration', is meant to tell the story to children through text and illustrations. Early Illuminated Haggadot were written on vellum by scribes in the European centres of Jewish culture - only forty such books are extant. Perhaps the finest and best-preserved of these is the mid-fifteenth-century Ashkenazi Haggadah in the collections of the British Library in London. This famous manuscript is beautifully reproduced here in facsimile in its original size. Every detail is captured, even down to the ages-old stains from wine spilled on the book's pages.
The Ashkenazi Haggadah was created by Joel ben Simeon, a German artist and scribe who worked in Northern Italy. Scholars believe that he was a master craftsman with his own workshop of assistants. Varieties in painting style and technique in this manuscript may be attributed to these assistants and to another artist who may have worked on the book once it left Joel ben Simeon's hands.
The book's pages of elegant Hebrew script are decorated with elaborate initials, fantastic ornaments, and exquisite miniatures depicting the Passover story and the Seder feast itself. Included here are a transcription and translation of the text into English, as well as an Introduction and Notes on the Illuminations by David Goldstein, curator of Hebrew manuscripts and printed books at the British Library.
This beautiful and historic book will be a welcome addition to every Jewish family library. A choice gift for a happy holiday, The Ashkenazi Haggadah can be used and enjoyed once again just as the scribe intended - at this year's Passover ceremony and at all those still to cone.

98 pages in full colour, with gold