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
ISTVÁN ORMOS can only be explained by the extremely high prestige in which the work was held within the community. 7 6 The manuscript was written in North-Eastern France and was completed in 1296. 7 7 Readers who are interested are referred to the in-folio facsimile editions in Hungarian and English containing the most important illuminations of the manuscript - alas in rather poor quality - in addition to important essays by Alexander Scheiber and Gabrielle Sed-Rajna. 7 8 The Hungarian and English versions are not identical: the English edition has some brief additional passages by Joshua Blau, Shlomo Pines and Isadore Twersky. Both editions were prepared under the artistic supervision of Tibor Szántó, who cut off part of the margins of the title pages of the books containing full-page illustrations, thus mutilating the illustrations in the margins in some places. This does not happen anywhere in the original manuscript. From among its splendid illustrations we pick one out here on account of an interesting recent discovery. At the bottom of the frontispiece of Book Twelve "The Book of Donations and Acquisitions" we see Moses delivering the Tablets of the Law to the people of Israel (fig. 1 on p. 102). Since the book contains the laws concerning donations and acquisitions, the artist has illustrated the frontispiece with the offering of the true gift, the revelation of the Law. The scene refers to a legend concerning the Biblical text: God uprooted Mount Sinai and placed it upside down, like an inverted basket, over the Israelites, in order to force them to accept the Law with its onerous obligations. The illustration shows Moses displaying the tablets of the Law to the Israelites, whose heads appear inside an opening in the mountain. 7 9 7 6 David KAUFMANN, Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Handschriftenillustration. In: MÜLLER VON SCHLOSSER 1898. 281, 292. MUNKÁCSI Ernő, Miniatűrművészet Itália könyvtáraiban. Héber kódexek [The Art of Miniatures in the Libraries of Italy. Hebrew Codices], Budapest [c. 1938], 16-17. 7 7 SED-RAJNA 1984. 37. NARKISS - SED-RAJNA 1988. First Kaufmann Mishneh Torah. Card No. 2. 7 8 A Májmúni kódex [Möse Májmúni törvény kódexe], A budapesti "Misné Tóra" legszebb lapjai. [Szerk. Scheiber Sándor]. Budapest 1980. Codex Maimuni. Moses Maimonides' Code of Law. The Illuminated Pages of the Kaufmann Mishneh Torah. [Ed. by Alexander Scheiber], Budapest - Frankfurt 1984. 7 9 SED-RAJNA 1984. 133. Cf. ibid. 31, 38'. This legend occurs also in the Quran. Joseph GUTMANN, The Haggadic Motif in Jewish Iconography = Eretz-lsrael 6 (1960) 22*. An illustration depicting this scene can also be found in the so-called Regensburg Pentateuch (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, MS 180/52). Robert SUCKALE, Über den Anteil christlicher Maler an der Ausmalung hebräischer Handschriften der Gotik in Bayern. In: Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Bayern. [Band 1.] Aufsätze. Ed. by Manfred Treml and Josef Kirmeier. [Veröffentlichungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte und Kultur, Nr. 17/88. Ed. by Claus Grimm.] München etc. 1988. 130. 144
