Lovers of historic Hebrew manuscripts will be familiar with some of the treasures in the British Library, home to one of the world’s great collections of around 85,000 Hebraica.
Pandemics notwithstanding, curator Ilana Tahan and her team have now assembled a captivating exhibition of around 40 of these works from across the Jewish world, some never seen previously, covering a wide array of topics over a 1,100-year period from the 10th century Gaster Bible to a 2018 London ketubah.
Stars of the show include the mid-14th century copy of Moreh Nevuchim, Maimonides’ highly influential Guide for the Perplexed in its Hebrew translation from the Judeo-Arabic by the Provencal scholar Samuel ibn Tibbon.
One of its pages is a dazzling folio in vibrant colours dominated by a crowned lion in burnished gold leaf representing the royal arms of Castile and Leon. This elegant book may have been intended for Castile’s king Alfonso XI or possibly his son and successor Pedro I, whose treasurer and trusted confidant Samuel Halevi Abulafia built Toledo’s magnificent El Transito synagogue.
Like many illuminated Hebrew works of the time involving collaboration between a Jewish scribe and a Christian artist, here the skilled sofer Levi ben Isaac of Salamanca worked with Ferrer Bassa, distinguished painter and miniaturist who ran a workshop in Barcelona.
Moreh Nevuchim became the subject of heated polemics between Maimonidean supporters seeking to reconcile tradition with science and philosophy, and the more conservative scholars who vigorously opposed that view. Yet the work’s importance, reflected in this wonderful manuscript, was to influence both Jewish and European thought for centuries.
Like Maimonides, Sephardi Jews excelled in the sciences, exemplified by the exhibition’s striking 15th century Hebrew calendrical and astronomical charts and tables as well as Abraham bar Hiyya’s earlier “Shape of the Earth” (painstakingly repaired by the Library’s experts in 2014).
Bar Hiyya (c.1065 – c.1136), one of the most prominent of several Jewish translators of Islamic scientific works into Latin and Hebrew, was probably the earliest to introduce Arabic algebra to Christian Europe and apparently the first to solve the quadratic equation x ² – ax + b = c.
Accomplished in both religious and secular scholarship, Abraham wrote as prolifically about geography, philosophy and music as he did on repentance and redemption in Judaism. A remarkable man.
There’s an English angle to the exhibition as well. Henry VIII, determined to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon, went so far as to seek rabbinic help in having his levirate marriage annulled by pope Clement VII, (though that’s not a story you’ll find in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall).
With no Jew in sight since the expulsion of 1290, and no rabbi within reach whom the king might “persuade” to give him the “right” answer, his advisers tracked down Hebrew scholars in Italy, the pope’s backyard, a blatant case of undiplomatic chutzpah, including an approach to Jacob Raphael Yehiel Hayyim Peglione of Modena. Alas, the British Library’s neatly written Hebrew responsum of 1530 from this sage offered Henry no comfort. The pope remained unyielding, so the king — much like the lone Jew on the proverbial desert island — established another place of worship with which he felt more comfortable. The rest, as they say, is history.
However the irony of being asked to help topple from her throne the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish monarchs who had ruthlessly banished every Jew from their realm 38 years earlier, could not have been lost on the learned Jacob when conveying the bad news to the king’s courtiers.
Desperate for vindication, they had even sent to Venice for a set of the brand new Daniel Bomberg edition of the Talmud. But by the time it arrived, bridges to Rome had long been burnt so this celebrated work was entrusted to the care of Westminster Abbey.
In 2017 it ultimately came home to Israel’s new National Library after its $9.3 million sale by an eminent London bibliophile who had acquired it years earlier with an offer the Abbey couldn’t refuse. But that’s a different story altogether.
One of the exhibition’s curiosities is Elisha ben Gad’s Ets Hada’at, the Tree of Knowledge derived from the Garden of Eden story. Elisha tells us he learnt his “secrets” — magic spells, healing potions, love charms, curses — from the sages of Venice and Safed during a lifetime of travels from his native Ancona.
By way of example, he has a recipe for success against an opponent in court, “tried and tested many times”. Before the encounter you hang the tongue of a hoopoe (the bird associated in Jewish lore with the wisdom of Solomon) close to your heart. Yet can we afford to mock mediaeval remedies? Preposterous myths about issues such as Covid-19 are still peddled to us daily, often by those who should know better.
Jewish India is represented by a fine parchment ketubah of 1887, the marriage contract given at their wedding by Jacob Ta’azi to his bride Simha Douwek. Its playful decorations reflect the contemporary good fortune of the Jews of Calcutta and Bombay. Many had left or fled Islamic Baghdad since the 18th century to thrive as merchants, traders and financiers under the greater freedoms of British governance.
The pledges by both families confirmed in this document total 7,555 rupees, some £150,000 in today’s money. The couple clearly enjoyed a solid start to married life.
Tigers, peacocks and a host of exotic red birds embellish this manuscript amid flowers and greenery. Pride of place is given at the centre to two fishes, one of the most popular symbols in Jewish folk art. Their eyes, like God’s, are ever open, offering protection, and their abundant eggs promise fertility.
It’s a vibrant and absorbing show, tracing the odyssey of the People of the Book across the globe to as far away as China. It illustrates vividly how Jewish ideas were refreshed and enhanced over the centuries, navigating ever-changing cultural and spiritual landscapes whatever the circumstances in which communities found themselves.
Not to be missed.
Eli Abt writes on the Jewish arts.
“Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word” is at the British Library until April 11, 2021, booking essential on boxoffice@bl.uk or 01937 546546
