Distinguished Lecture Series—Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Medieval Passover Haggadah: From Rituals to Illuminations,” Session III

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.

“The Book and the Seder III: The Functions of Illustrated Haggadot”

In part three of our lecture series, Katrin Kogman-Appel, PhD, will explore the role of illuminations in haggadot, considering ornamented and un-ornamented examples. Some haggadot were designed as ritual objects meant to guide the seder leader, who, by divine command, was obliged to stage a successful commemoration ritual, but was not trained as a ritual agent. Illustration cycles had a tremendous potential to enhance this function of guidance. Other haggadot were meant for study and were most probably owned by scholars. Yet others were plain and cheap and while they still assisted the seder leader in staging the ritual, they did not offer any visualized guidance.

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).