Beschreibung:

An elegantly penned Provencal prayer book.
Jews have been present in the Avignon region since the Talmudic period, though a community per se is first attested from the twelfth century. Culturally, linguistically, and religiously, Avignonese Jewry was straightforwardly Provencal, but because the city was sold to the pope in 1348, it was politically distinct. As a result, together with another papal territory, the immediately adjacent Comtat Venaissin, Avignon served as a safe haven for Jews when they were expelled from the rest of Provence in 1498-1501. From that point, Avignon and three Comtat locales—Cavaillon, Carpentras, and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue—became the last bastions of authentic Provencal minhag (usage).
For all their similarities, though, there were some important differences between the liturgical rites of Avignon and the other communities, mainly in connection with the piyyutim (liturgical poetry) each recited, which necessitated that they use separate prayer books. The first attempt to publish the minhag of Carpentras was undertaken in Amsterdam between 1739 and 1763; this was followed by a series of Avignon-rite prayer books issued between 1763 and 1767 in Amsterdam and Avignon, including a seder ha-ashmorot (Amsterdam, 1763).
The present lot, a small folio-sized collection of selihot (penitential prayers) according to the rite of Avignon for the first night of the month of Elul and the period surrounding the High Holidays, was masterfully copied by Immanuel bar Gad de Milhaud in 1690 on behalf of his relative, Moses ben Abraham de Carcassonne. De Milhaud, active for over half a century between 1662/1663 and 1715/1716, was one of the most prolific Provencal scribes ever, and his oeuvre of beautifully executed liturgies has survived in dozens of exemplars located in libraries in the United States, Israel, England, France, Switzerland, Russia, and Italy. His son, Gad, continued his father’s craft into the mid-eighteenth century. 
This volume was purchased by David Solomon Sassoon on June 11, 1911, in Paris—presumably from Menahem Lipschütz, a local bookseller—along with another Avignon-rite liturgy copied about the same time by the same scribe and with similar provenance (Sassoon 278). (Two other Avignon-rite prayerbooks owned by Moses de Carcassonne are known: New York, The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary Ms. 4844 and Paris, École Rabbinique de France Ms. 24, the latter copied by de Milhaud.) It was used by Benjamin Bar-Tikva in his edition of the religious poetry of Rabbi Isaac he-Seniri of Beaucaire (twelfth-thirteenth century) and survives as a monument of pre-print Provencal Jewish civilization.
ProvenanceMosse/Moses ben Abraham de Carcassonne (p. 5, spine)David ben Moses de Carcassonne (pp. 1, 3, 180)Judah de Milhaud (p. 3)Monsieur Salomon de… (pp. 1, 290)
Physical Description290 pages (10 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.; 274 x 196 mm) (collation: i-xii12) on paper (pp. 1-4, 128, 289-290 mostly blank); modern pagination in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corners; first page of each quire (except the first) signed in pen in Arabic numerals in gutter at head; written in Provencal square (headings and incipits) and semi-cursive (text body) scripts in brown ink; generally poetically arranged text mostly of twenty-four lines per page; ruled in blind and in plummet; justification of lines via dilation or contraction of final letters and insertion of space fillers; headers added pretty consistently through p. 163, less so thereafter; horizontal catchwords in lower margins of versos; (faulty) Tiberian vocalization of text; Tetragrammaton abbreviated to three yodin in a triangular formation followed by a wavy line; corrections, strikethroughs, and/or marginalia in primary and secondary hands; some later text written in French. Title set within (unfinished) architectural frame; periodic flourishes (e.g., pp. 36, 69, 83, 185, 190-191, 249, 251, 260, 262, 265, 276-277, 283, 288). Scattered staining and dampstaining; some thumbing and foxing; short tears in lower edges of pp. 1-36, 45-54, 97-112, 143-144, 159-160, 179-180, 289-290 and in upper edge of pp. 181-182, not affecting text; slight worming in upper edges of pp. 57-62. Original leather over cardboard, scratched and worn, especially along edges; binding separating somewhat from text block; gilt-tooled spine in six compartments with raised bands, with owner’s name (Mosse de Carca) lettered in gilt in second compartment and paper ticket with shelf mark in lowest compartment; original paper flyleaf on upper board (paginated) and original paper pastedowns.
LiteratureBenjamin Bar-Tikva (ed.), Piyyutei r. yitshak ha-seniri (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1996), 110-111, 119-121, 150-157, 170-174.
Cecil Roth, “The Liturgies of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin,” Journal of Jewish Bibliography 1,4 (July 1939): 99-105.
David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel Dawid: Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London, vol. 1 ([Oxford]: Oxford University Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1932), 216-218 (no. 279).
David Solomon Sassoon, “Hebrew and Arabic Poetry of the Yemenite Jews,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 24,4 (April 1934): 357-361, at p. 359.
Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 550.
Zosa Szajkowski, “Yehudim be-arba ha-kehillot shel ha-proventsiyah ha-appifyorit bi-derom tsarefat: bibliyyogerafyah shel sefarim, hoverot u-mismakhim mudpasim me-ha-me’ah ha-17 ad tehillat ha-me’ah ha-19,” Kiryat sefer 32,2-3 (1957): 205-210, 349-356, at p. 210 (no. 59).