Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)
KÖNYVTÁR ÉS HAGYOMÁNY – LIBRARY AND TRADITION
G. Sed-Rajna rather research tools for further investigations. Indeed, new data, found in manuscripts kept in other collections can, at any time, provide complementary information about one or other of the codices included in the Index and hence raise new studies. The lines that follow will give an example of such a case. The mahzor, ms. A 383 of the Kaufmann collection (Index no. 6), is a small sized prayer book compiled for private use. It contains all the texts needed for the everyday devotion, the prayers for shabbat, benedictions pronounced at various occasions such as wedding, marriage, circumcision, or the healing of a sick man. It contains also liturgical poems for the feasts, namely for Hanukah, for the first and the last day of Passover, for Shavuot, Sukkot and Shemini 'Atseret. Different religious laws (halakhah) concerning the purity of food and mles concerning ritual slaughtering complete the liturgical texts to which was also added the most popular moral treatise, the Pirqey Avot ("Chapters of the Fathers") of the Mishna. The texts composing the manuscript do not follow the order one would logically expect. The manuscript seems to have been compiled from fragments so as to meet the requirements for the entire year, but some parts of the text have been mislayed and one, the Haggadah, read during the Passover eve ceremony, is missing altogether. However, on fol. 63v, the extant catchword ha - referring to the initial word of the Haggadah -, shows that even this text made originally part of the ritual. Even though presented in a disturbed order, the script and the layout of the entire manuscript are homogeneous. There is no doubt that the manuscript was copied throughout by the same hand and at the same time. The date of the copy is suggested by a chronogramme, a method frequently used by medieval Jewish scribes to indicate the time when they achieved their task. On fol. 63v, at the end of a theological poem, called "The Seventy-two verses", the letters signed by super-scribed points give the number 190, which, with the five thousands implied, give the date [5] 190 of Creation, i.e. 1430 of the common era. The scribe informs also about the geographical area where he worked, as he mentions twice (fols 142r, 180v) that the liturgical texts follow the rite of Ulm, in Westphalia. The entire region, and in particular the city of Ulm is known to have had an active Jewish community during the Middle Ages. There is no formal colophon in the manuscript. Yet, by a method specific to Jewish scribes, the copyist did indicate his name and gave even some further information concerning his activities. His name was Abraham: each time this name occurs in the text, he emphasizes it either by a hand drawn next to it, or by a flower motif placed around it. Abraham informs the reader also about his activities. He was a professional scribe: on two pages, the hand drawn next to the name Abraham holds a quill, which was the 92 Thoughts in the library "
