Distinguished Lecture Series: Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Medieval Passover Haggadah: From Rituals to Illuminations,” Session II
Thursday, February 26, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
The Center for Jewish Studies is delighted to welcome Katrin Kogman-Appel, PhD, as a distinguished lecturer. Professor Kogman-Appel will deliver three lectures and will hold two workshops with early printed books and facsimiles.
Overview of the Lecture Series
A stand-alone haggadah is an individually bound book that is ritually used during the seder ceremony on the eve of Passover to fulfill the divine precept of telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt to the young. Originally the haggadah was part of the general prayerbook and around the twelfth century it began to emerge as a separate volume. In some contrast to the widely held impression that the Passover haggadah has been the most widely owned book among Jews since premodern times, the number of surviving haggadot, both handwritten and printed, is surprisingly low. This series of lectures tells the story of the stand-alone haggadah as a book genre in its own right and describes a century-long process of emergence and refinement until the haggadah finally became a common household item, around the middle of the seventeenth century.
Schedule for Session Two
4 – 5:30 p.m.: An in-person workshop with Katrin Kogman-Appel at Walsh Library, 4th Floor, Archives and Special Collections
A hands-on, in-person-only workshop and open house focusing on haggadot from Fordham’s Collection at Archives and Special Collections in Walsh Library, 4th Floor at Fordham’s Rose Hill Campus.
6 p.m.: Lecture, Walsh Library, 4th Floor, O’Hare Room (in-person and online)
“The Book and the Seder II: The Birth of the Stand-Alone Haggadah and its Early History”
Part two of this lecture series explores the ways in which the haggadah differs from all other books, general prayerbooks in particular. For instance, one might ask, Why was it unpractical to use a Siddur during the seder? In this lecture, Katrin Kogman-Appel, PhD, will seek to answer such questions through a material-study approach. Not all stand-alone haggadot are the same. Rather, a whole range of haggadot emerged since the 12th century: tiny booklets, plain haggadot, extremely lavish haggadot with first-rate paintings, illustrated haggadot with less lavish but abundant marginal vignettes, and so on. In this lecture we shall look at the early beginnings of the stand-alone haggadah and follow its developments into a whole variety of book types.
About Katrin Kogman-Appel
Katrin Kogman-Appel, PhD, is Alexander von Humbolt Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Münster. Until 2015 she was Professor, Vice-Dean, and holder of the Evelyn Metz Memorial Research Chair at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. She is a world expert on Jewish art of the Middle Ages with a focus on illuminated manuscripts of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Spain and Germany. Her many publications include: Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday (2006); A Mahzor from Worms: Art and Religion in a Medieval Jewish Community (2012); and Catalan Maps and Jewish Books: The Intellectual Profile of Elisha ben Abraham Cresques (1325-1387) (2020).
