Jewish Daily & Religious Life in Medieval Spain in Light of Illuminated Haggadot by Professor Shalom Sabar

PROF. SHALOM SABAR –  RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN – SUN. APR. 24 AT SUMMIT

The Summit, Ezra Bessaroth and Sephardic Bikur Holim proudly present a special, return engagement by Professor Shalom Sabar. Jewish Daily & Religious Life in Medieval Spain in Light of Illuminated Haggadot Join us on Sunday, April 24, Chol HaMoed Pesach, 11am, at The Summit (1200 University St).

Prof. Sabar is head of the Departments of Art History and of Jewish & Contemporary Folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sponsored by Ezra Bessaroth and Sephardic Bikur Holim.

The most attractive and luxurious illuminated Passover Haggadah manuscripts in the Jewish world were created in fourteenth century Spain. The illuminations vividly illustrate the heroic narrative of Exodus and other books of the Bible in great and captivating detail. At the same the miniatures reveal aspects of daily and religious life of the Sephardi Jews in the Middle Ages — opening wide vistas to their customs and rituals, preparations for Passover and the Seder night, the interior of the synagogues and the appurtenances of the Sifrei Torah, childbirth and the status of women, motherhood and children. These and other aspects will be explored through images taken from the original parchment Haggadah manuscripts preserved in the leading national libraries in London, Paris, Rome, New York and Washington D.C.

Professor Sabar’s research joins together the disciplines of art history and folklore, highlighting issues pertaining to the artistic and folk nature of Jewish culture, especially in the Sephardic and Islamic worlds. Visual materials and objects associated with rituals in the life and year cycles are examined vis-à-vis the evidence these materials provide about Jewish life in the past and the relationships between the Jewish minorities and the societies that hosted them in Christian Europe and the Islamic East.