É. Apor (ed.): David Kaufmann Memorial Volume: Papers Presented at the David Kaufmann Memorial Conference, November 29, 1999, Budapest.
ORMOS, István: David Kaufmann and his Collection
DAVID KAUFMANN AND HIS COLLECTION consisting of three volumes. The two remaining volumes are preserved in the British Library in London and in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. 14 6 An interesting characteristic of the manuscript is that human female figures generally appear with animals' heads. The adoption of animals' heads occurs in illuminated manuscripts produced in France and Germany in the 1 3-14th centuries but the general habit is to represent all human figures, male and female alike, in this way - in contradistinction to our manuscript. 14 7 There is no universally accepted explanation for this peculiarity. Joseph Gutmann writes: Most scholars feel that it is attributable to an iconophobic tendency in contemporary German Jewry; one scholar claims that these characteristics are caricatures traceable to the medieval stage; others are convinced that they represented godly grace - elevation above the human. None of these theories is satisfactory, since the evidence of the miniatures contradicts the various hypotheses. In the mystical literature of the circle that gathered around the twelfth-century Judah he-Hasid (Judah, the Pious), we do find mention of dog-headed and bird-beaked human beings. The whole problem needs further study. 1 4" One of the visitors to our Collection, Ruth Mellinkoff, came to the conclusion during her recent researches that what in fact lies behind the representation of women with the heads of animals - and mainly those considered repulsive in the contemporary imagination - is anti-Jewish feelings of Christian illuminators, who resorted to hidden iconographic allusions which Jewish patrons would not comprehend. 14 5 On this manuscript see Gabrielle SED-RAJNA, Le mahzor enluminé. Les voies de formation d'un programme iconographique. Leiden 1983. 16-17, 47-48, 71-72. NARKISS - SED-RAJNA 1988. Tripartite Mahzor, vol. I. Card No. 41. KAUFMANN purchased the manuscript from antiquarian bookseller RABINOWITZ (Munich) in 1883. 14 6 Bezalel NARKISS, A Tripartite Illuminated Mahzor from a South German School of Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts around 1300. In: Fourth World Congress of Jewish Studies [Jerusalem 1965]. Papers. Jerusalem 1967-1968. II. 129-133. A student of NARKISS has now prepared a thorough analysis of the whole manuscipt. Sarit SHALEV-EYNI, Ha-Mahzor ha mesullas [ The tripartite Mahzor]. Ph.D.diss. Jerusalem 2001. 14 7 See e.g. the so-called Bird's Head Haggadah (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Ms. 180/57), so called because the human figures in it appear mostly with birds' heads. The manuscript was written in Southern Germany around 1300. 14 8 GUTMANN 1978.25-26. SeealsoCoHEN 1988.49. Ruth MELLINKOFF 1999. II.NARKISS 19671968. 133. Heinrich STRAUSS, Die Kunst der Juden im Wandel der Zeit und Umwelt. Tübingen 1972. 56-62. Joseph GUTMANN, The Illuminated Medieval Passover Haggadah: Investigations and Research Problems - • Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 7 (1965) 8 [offprint]. 157
