Passover Haggadah with illustrations. Augsburg: Chaim son of David Shachor, 1534.

Passover Haggadah, with woodcut illustrations, one of the earliest illustrated Haggadot to be printed. The Haggadah originally comprises four large illustrations, and nine small illustrations (effectively four different small illustrations, repeated). The present copy lacks the title page and five other leaves in the middle. All four large illustrations and six of the small illustrations are present, three of the small illustrations are lacking (two illustrations on the Four Sons leaf, and another illustration after the Gaal Yisrael blessing).

The first large illustration features several people sitting around a table, and the second similar illustration features a family sitting around a table. The next two illustrations, printed on the leaf with Kiddush and Havdalah, feature a hunter with his dogs chasing hares (in the first illustration, the dogs chase the hares into a net, and the second shows the hares having escaped the net, watching the dogs from the other side; this has been taken by some as an allegory for the Jewish people's escape from their persecutors). The motif of the hare hunted by a dog appears in several illustrated Haggadah manuscripts, and also in the Prague 1527 Haggadah, and its origin appears to be in the mnemonic Yaknehaz for the order of blessings for a combined Kiddush and Havdalah, which phonetically resembles the German Jagen-hase ("hare hunting").

Colophon on last leaf: "Order of Pesach completed, today, Sunday, 3rd Shevat, Chaim son of David [=1534] the typesetter".

Between second and third leaves of fifth gathering, three handwritten leaves bound (in neat Italian semi-cursive script, ca. date of printing), with end of the piyyut Pesach Mitzrayim Asirai Yatzu Chofshim and the piyyut MiBeit Aven Shevet Medanai.

Incomplete copy. [18] leaves. Originally: i-vi4 ([24] leaves). Lacking [6] leaves: i1 (title page), ii1, and gathering iv (4 leaves). With [3] handwritten leaves between second and third leaves of gathering v. 17.5 cm. Fair condition. Stains, including dampstains and dark stains. Tears and open tears, affecting text on several leaves, repaired with paper. Open tears from ink erosion, affecting text, on handwritten leaves. New binding.

R. Chaim Shachor was a distinguished printer in the early Hebrew press in Europe outside of Italy, and one of the first printers in Prague. He founded the first Hebrew press in Germany (Augsburg), and later founded the first Hebrew press in Lublin. He was active in Prague ca. 1515-1526 (he is claimed to have been involved in the woodcut designs for the Prague 1527 Haggadah, although the evidence is inconclusive). Next he settled in Oels, Silesia (present-day Oleśnica, Poland), where he printed several books. In 1534 he moved to Augsburg, where he established his press. In his press in Augsburg, only about 10 Hebrew titles were printed. Later (in 1543), he and his family moved to Ichenhausen, where he also printed several books; he then printed several books in Heddernheim. Ca. 1547 he reached Lublin, where he established the first Hebrew press in the city (see: A.M. Habermann, HaMadpis Chaim Shachor, Beno Yitzchak VeChatano Yosef ben R. Yakar, Kiryat Sefer XXXI, p. 491).

The present edition is particularly rare, and there are only two other known extant copies: a complete copy on parchment in the British Library, and another paper copy in the JTS Library in New York. To the best of our knowledge, this Haggadah has never before been put up for auction.

Otzar HaHaggadot 11.

C. Roth, HaHaggadah HaMetzuyeret ShebiDefus, Areshet III, 1961, pp. 12-13.

Mosche N. Rosenfeld, Der jüdische Buchdruck in Augsburg in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, London, 1985, no. 42, pp. 34-35.

Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History, A Panorama in Facsimile of Five Centuries of the Printed Haggadah from the Collections of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Philadelphia, 1975, pp. 35-37; plates 14-17.